Naruto: Chimera Master
by Konoha's Demon Child
Summary: Hated and shunned by his village, a young Naruto stumbles across an abandoned base that once belonged to someone called Hiruko. How will Naruto's life change as he strives to perfect and master the Chimera Technique and become powerful enough to protect himself from anyone that would hurt him? Eventual strong!Naruto, Grey!Naruto
1. The Discovery

**A/N: This is an idea I've been toying with for a while now and finally decided to actually write it up after being encouraged by the positive reception my other story 'The Wild Fox of Beacon' had, since the main reason it never got written was because I didn't think my writing would be any good. This story is also part of the reason Chapter 3 of that story took so long to get written up. As per the summary, it will feature a Naruto that uses the Chimera Technique that is featured in the third Naruto Shippuden movie 'Inheritors of the Will of Fire' where Hiruko is the antagonist.**

****However, unlike the handful of other stories I've come across where he uses the technique, he's not going to instantly master it as soon as he finds it and is instead going to have to put in a good deal of effort to get the results he wants. Also, the reason he's listed as 'Grey' in the summary is that, whilst he's definitely not a good person (he's willing to experiment on animals and people just to make himself stronger), I don't really consider him to be outright evil either since he doesn't have any desire to see Konoha burn (or anything else similar) but instead simply wants to become strong enough to protect himself, even if the way he's going about it can be seen as very immoral. If that's not the correct usage of the term 'grey' then feel free to let me know since I'm not too sure on the exact differences between 'Grey', 'Dark' etc. when talking about characters.****

**IMPORTANT: I'm going to warn everybody now that this story will contain scenes of biological experimentation (both with animals and humans) in the form of practising the Chimera Technique, as well as violence (it's a series about ninja), some minor non-sexual nudity and probably some strong language as well at some point. If you don't like reading that sort of stuff, then this story is probably not going to be for you. It's rated M for a reason.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, it belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.**

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><p><span><strong>Chapter 1: The Discovery<strong>

Running down the street as fast as his legs could carry him, eight-year-old Naruto Uzumaki risked a glance over his shoulder and saw that his pursuers were still going strong despite a few of them being more than a little intoxicated. The boy wasn't even sure how he had ended up in his current situation, even though it was something that happened far too often for his liking. He had been walking around Konoha trying to kill time for a bit longer until he went home since it was a Saturday afternoon and thus he had no lessons at the academy and, due to his lack of attention to his surroundings, had bumped into someone hard enough to knock the bottle they were holding out of their hand. Unfortunately, the tipsy man had not appreciated having his bottle of alcohol smashed and, once he got a good look at the one responsible, he had started shouting all sorts of obscenities before giving chase. For some reason, the child's chaser's racket had led to several other people joining in as soon as they had seen him, resulting in the dozen or so strong crowd that was trying, and somehow failing, to catch him.

Sadly, the ANBU operatives that were in charge of monitoring that area of the village were unable to assist the young blond as they had all been called in to quell a riot that had broken out after the group had passed by a small club where a party was being held and had knocked over several of the guests, a couple of whom had been injured enough to require a trip to the hospital. This meant that Naruto had to keep running in the hope that he could lose his assailants or that they would eventually give up. Unfortunately for him, the group's inability to catch an eight-year-old child was frustrating them and it soon became a matter of pride that kept them going, meaning that they had absolutely no plans to give up.

Seeing that his followers were in no hurry to quit, Naruto decided to do something that he, along with the rest of his class, had been warned not to do by his teacher at the academy; that something being channelling chakra through his body to try and increase his speed. The reason that the students had been told not to try it was that they had only covered the basics of chakra usage the previous week after the teachers had made sure that each and every student was capable of accessing their chakra. The rest of the time at the academy had been spent covering things that Naruto considered to be completely useless for a shinobi, not to mention immensely boring, such as the history of the village and the basics of how chakra was formed in the body. The teachers were not planning on teaching anything specific about actual chakra use for at least another month or two and every student was explicitly told not to try using their chakra for anything since they didn't know enough to do it safely and could easily hurt themselves if they did something wrong.

As the scared child tried to focus on the energy inside his body, something that was extremely difficult for him to do whilst moving given how little practice he had, a small rock sailed past his head, indicating that at least one of his pursuers was getting fed up of simply chasing him. After a few false starts, one of which had almost made him trip, Naruto felt the strange warmth of his chakra as it started to spread through his body. He quickly sent it down into his legs and was soon rewarded with a significant increase in his running speed that was accompanied by a slight feeling of discomfort in his calf and thigh muscles. After a good ten minutes of running, during which time the crowd chasing him had more than doubled in size and the discomfort in his legs had turned into full-blown pain, another larger, and sharper, rock struck the blond in the back of the head, disorientating him and causing his vision to blur slightly as he felt a thin trail of blood flow down the back of his neck.

Due to the pain in his head destroying his concentration, the chakra that was being channelled through Naruto's legs was stopped and he soon slowed down due to a combination of the lack of enhancement, the pain said enhancement had been causing whilst active and the pulsing anguish caused by his recent injury. The blond knew that unless he did something, the people chasing him would soon catch up and so he ducked down into a side alley, idly noticing that he had absolutely no idea where in the village he actually was.

Even after turning into the alley, the Uzumaki did not stop as he was sure that the crowd had to have seen him and wouldn't simply carry on past. However, the alley itself was quite bare, only containing a few trash cans and a couple of random cardboard boxes. Fortunately, the blond also noticed a single manhole cover partially hidden by some rubbish near the far end of the alley and was soon trying to lift it enough for him to squeeze under. The circle of metal was too heavy for the child to lift, even with chakra being sent into his arms, and based on what he could hear the crowd had almost reached the alley's entrance.

Luckily, through sheer dumb chance, a sliver of chakra brushed against a small engraving at the edge of the grate and the whole thing swung up like a trap door. This unexpected action caused the unbalanced child to fall into the recently opened hole in the ground with a yelp just as the manhole cover lowered itself back into place, the motion causing a bag of rubbish to fall from the heap and covering the metal disc from view. It was just in time, as the group of villagers who had been chasing him had just ran into the alley after hearing his voice and were now looking around in confusion at the absence of their target.

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><p>Dazed from his fall, Naruto groggily climbed to his feet and looked around. It did not do him much good, though, since wherever he was, it was pitch-black due to a complete lack of light sources. After a few minutes of fumbling along the wall, which was further away than he thought it would be, he eventually found a light switch and clicked it on. The bulbs overhead flickered for almost a minute, showing that it had been a very long time since they were last used, before they finally lit up, illuminating the room.<p>

The area was bigger than the blond expected it to be, especially since it was under the village. A brief glance upwards confirmed that the room was taller than what would be found in most houses and it made him wonder exactly how he had endured the fall with only a few bruises and a headache; the rock that had struck his head had done more damage as he remembered the feeling of blood sliding down his neck. At that, Naruto wiped his hand against his neck and felt that the trickle of blood was already drying and the injury to his head had already disappeared. However, all thoughts about his body's apparent durability disappeared as the child took a proper look around. There were numerous cobwebbed shelves lining most of the walls, some filled with books and scrolls whilst others held glass tanks of all sizes. There were also a couple of doors, suggesting that the place was even bigger and making the blond wonder how nobody seemed to know about it. The tanks were full of a pale green liquid and, upon closer inspection of one, Naruto recoiled back in shock.

The tank, which looked large enough to hold something the size of a small child, contained the freakiest skeleton he had ever seen, which admittedly wasn't too difficult since it was the first one he had seen outside a book. It vaguely resembled a dog of some sort but instead of back legs and a short tail, there was a long skeletal tail trailing out that made him think of a snake. The weirdest thing was that it didn't look like someone had just taken two incomplete skeletons and tied them together or something but rather the two parts were joined together in exactly the same way as any other two bones, suggesting that it had once been an actual living creature. That train of thought was confirmed when he looked at the tank next to it which held a dead creature that bore the upper half of a dog and the long coiled tail of a snake and the flesh where the two animals met was a smooth join, though the sight of fur suddenly giving way to scales was more than a little unusual.

All of the other containers had similar contents, either a fusion of two or occasionally more different animals or the skeleton of such a creature. As he studied the bizarre beings out of morbid fascination, Naruto could not help but admit that, whilst the creatures were most definitely bizarre and in a few cases disgusting, they were also kind of cool. After looking at the last tank, which held a featherless four-winged bird, the blond turned his attention to the nearby metal desk to see if there was anything else interesting to look at.

The table didn't have much on it, just a couple of books and a few pictures that showed a few more strange animal hybrids, but it did not matter to him once he started reading an open handwritten book. The item seemed to be some kind of journal that had, along with the underground lair he was in and apparently a few others as well, belonged to someone called Hiruko, though he had been unable to make out the surname, and it detailed how said person had tried to create a ninjutsu that would allow for the merging of multiple living beings into a single entity bearing the characteristics of all of the constituent creatures, which explained the animal hybrids filling the tanks. Apparently, Hiruko's overall aim was to be able to merge with one or more Kekkei Genkai-bearing shinobi to gain access to their abilities.

Upon reading that, Naruto couldn't help but picture himself using some of the abilities he had heard of during classes, like the First Hokage's ability to grow huge trees in an instant or the Uchiha clan's Sharingan, though he didn't know much about the latter. If he possessed that sort of power then the villagers wouldn't dare try and hurt him like they had earlier and they would respect him as well; he had heard how revered the First Hokage was and everybody seemed to admire the Uchiha and Hyuga clans. Admittedly, he wasn't all that bothered about the respect thing since he was much more interested in getting strong enough to protect himself from the villagers that kept trying to hurt him but he guessed it couldn't hurt.

The eight-year-old was about to dismiss the fantasy and carry on exploring when he realised that he might actually be able to do it. The journal contained all of Hiruko's notes, although the technique had apparently not been completed as the last entry mentioned something about Hiruko having to leave in a hurry, so it couldn't be that difficult for him to figure it out. His childish naivety and general lack of understanding of how complicated ninja techniques could be assured him that he would have it sorted within a month or two at most.

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><p>Yawning to himself, Naruto flipped a page in the book he was reading as he tried to commit its contents to memory. Despite his initial belief that Hiruko's technique would be easy to get working, it had turned out to be far more complicated that he had first thought. However, the nine-year-old was refusing to give up even though almost ten months had passed since he had first discovered everything; his intense desire to become strong enough to not have to worry about people trying to hurt him proved to be more than enough to keep him going.<p>

Currently, the young Uzumaki was sat on a chair in Hiruko's underground base with his feet resting on the desk and an anatomy book open on his legs. One of the problems that Hiruko had found with his idea was that, to achieve a viable fusion of living beings, all of the body parts would have to be linked together properly. The shinobi had theorised that with a broad enough understanding of the biology of each creature involved it would be possible to ensure that the fusion would occur properly as it was being performed. The downside to this was that, for an absolutely flawless merger, the amount of information that needed to be learnt would take quite a while to memorise. This was the reason that the shinobi had instead tried to come up with a way to bestow some kind of limited intelligence to the technique itself so that it would be able to properly ensure that everything was done correctly.

Unfortunately, based on what was written in the journal, achieving that was incredibly difficult if not outright impossible since such a thing was apparently unheard of. This was why Naruto, instead of spending his time trying to do something like that and probably failing, had instead decided to try and develop the understanding to do everything himself; he also felt that the technique doing everything for him seemed kind of like cheating. To avoid having to learn too much, however, he had limited himself purely to mammalian anatomy since that was what humans were; he would just learn about non-mammal biology if he ever wanted to use the technique on something else.

In addition to his reading, he was also going through Hiruko's notes to see what else needed to be done to actually complete the technique. This was easier than he would have expected since the older shinobi had a habit of writing down numerous theories long before he was at the point to actually test them and had come up with several ways that the technique could be finished. To simplify it as much as possible, the Chimera Technique broke down any being it was used on into individual cells or groups of cells and then rearranged them to get the desired result; in theory, with enough chakra and concentration any number of creatures could be merged at a time. The technique could also, theoretically, be used on any creature, ranging from birds and dogs to worms and fish, without any kind of limitation as long as the creatures were alive since using dead animals would apparently result in something called necrosis, which wasn't a particularly good thing and the images he had seen when looking up the term still made him a little uncomfortable. The problem Hiruko had come across was the rearranging of the separated cells since it was this part that required an immense level of knowledge to get everything right otherwise muscle tissue could end up inside bone or nerves could be connected to each other in endless loops, hence why Hiruko had tried to make the technique sentient enough to be able to do that itself.

A glance at the clock on the wall that he had acquired showed Naruto that he would have to be at the academy in a little over six and a half hours for his lessons so the blond placed the book on the desk, after marking his place, and passed through one of the doors behind him. Shortly after he had discovered the base, he had explored it in its entirety to see what else was there. There were four other rooms present in the underground complex aside from the first as well as a pair of long hidden tunnels, one of which led outside and the other connected to a second bigger hideout, though that one had around a dozen rooms, some of which were quite large, and more exits both inside and outside the village.

He had soon converted one room in the first base into a makeshift bedroom so that he would not have to keep going back to his apartment, which was over on the other side of the village, every night to sleep though he did still go there every now and then to keep up appearances since people were bound to get suspicious if he seemed to disappear whenever he wasn't in the academy and couldn't be found anywhere in the village. The second room already had a pair of large metal tables set up as well as a few other things that made Naruto think that it was where Hiruko carried out all of his experiments whilst trying to complete his Chimera Technique. The third room was set up as a basic bathroom, containing nothing more than a bathtub that had been sloppily converted into a makeshift shower due to his preferences, a toilet, a sink and a wall-mounted mirror and the fourth was being used as a storeroom but currently only held a small fridge and a couple of shelves of food.

After double-checking the timer system for the lights to ensure that they would come on at the right time, the child soon collapsed onto the simple bed he had managed to get down there, not even bothering to change into more appropriate sleepwear. Once again, he was happy that, for some reason he simply didn't know, he didn't seem to require the standard amount of sleep a night that others did and could function without any problems on five and a half to six hours. It also seemed that his body required less sleep the older he got as, before he had stumbled across his current residence, he used to sleep for around seven hours a day. He wasn't going to complain about it, though, as it gave him a decent amount of free time to read through everything that Hiruko had left behind. He chose not to read through the notes in public as he seriously doubted that the villagers would be particularly happy if they knew what he was trying to learn since, if he got stronger, they wouldn't be able to hurt him anymore and that was something that they seemed to enjoy. Within ten minutes of his head hitting the pillow, Naruto was asleep, his mind slowly going over his plans for the following day which involved his first actual attempt at using the Chimera Technique.

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><p>The young blond arrived at his classroom with ten minutes to spare and immediately took his usual seat in the back corner. His seating choice not only helped his slight paranoia concerning unexpected attacks from behind that had developed over the years but also meant that he didn't have to deal with other people too much since the class wasn't quite at full capacity and typically nobody sat in the seat next to him. Half of the other students were already present and sitting with their friends chatting. Naruto himself didn't have any friends in the class, which was at least in part due to parents telling their children to keep away from him, but he wasn't bothered by it. If he had friends then he would undoubtedly let his guard down around them after a while and he would rather not expose himself like that around people that could easily turn on him at a moment's notice.<p>

The rest of the class slowly trickled in over the next few minutes, soon followed by the two teachers, Iruka Umino and Mizuki Baikokudo, who appeared just a few minutes before the lesson was due to start. Just as Iruka was about to call out the register to note who was present and who was absent, the classroom door was slammed open by a pair of girls who both proceeded to shove each other out of the way to try and get into the room first. Both of the girls had shoulder-length hair, though one had blonde hair and the other bright pink. Naruto didn't really know anything about the pink-haired girl, he wasn't even sure what her name was, other than that she was from a civilian family and was the first in her line to try and become a ninja. On the other hand, Naruto knew that the blonde was a member of Konoha's mind-walking Yamanaka clan by the name of Ino.

The only reason he even knew that much was because he had done a little bit of research into the various shinobi clans that resided in the village to see what sort of abilities he might be able to acquire with the Chimera Technique once he mastered it. Unfortunately, his research hadn't proved to be all that helpful since he had found out that the unique abilities each clan displayed were almost always secret techniques and not something inherited. That meant that their abilities were all taught and so the Chimera Technique would be useless in acquiring them; he would have to find a member of the clan willing to teach him the techniques if he actually wanted them. The only clans in the entire village that actually had inheritable abilities were the Hyuga clan, who possessed the Byakugan, and the Uchiha clan, who had the Sharingan.

After a couple of minutes of the girls' non-stop bickering about who entered the room first and thus who would be able to sit next to the object of their shared affection Sasuke Uchiha, Iruka got fed up and shouted at both of them to sit down, using what seemed to be a genjutsu to make his head appear much larger than it was. The scare tactic worked well as the pair of girls scurried to the two nearest seats they could find, the blonde succeeding in claiming the seat next to Sasuke and sticking her tongue out at the pink-haired girl in victory as soon as Iruka's back was turned.

Honestly, Naruto didn't know why both girls were so interested in the boy, let alone pretty much every other girl in the class as well. All he knew was that, since the massacre of the entire Uchiha clan a few months ago, Sasuke had gone from the polite and kind-hearted boy he used to be to the power-hungry and somewhat arrogant person he was now. Whilst Naruto could appreciate the other boy's desire for power he found the reason, to kill his older brother Itachi who had been the one to carry out the mass killing, to be a bit pointless. After all, why spend so much time acquiring power just to kill one person? Regardless of that, the blond still kept an eye on the Uchiha as he was the only potential source of a Sharingan in the whole village if he ever decided he wanted it.

Despite the interruption at the start, something that was unfortunately a very regular occurrence, the rest of the morning was quite boring and Naruto ended up focusing more on the different bits of information he would need for his experiment later than the actual lessons. Once lunchtime rolled around, the blond simply slipped out of the academy and made his way to a nearby ramen stand for his meal. None of the other students ever sat with him at lunch, mainly due to the words of their parents but also partly because the young Uzumaki was simply quite boring to be around. He never showed off in any lesson, always kept to himself and generally didn't stand out in any way other than being a little cold to others. That was something he was doing deliberately since he had learnt relatively early on that if he received any attention it would almost certainly be negative and quite possibly painful as well.

The afternoons consisted of the more practical lessons taught at the academy, namely ninjutsu and taijutsu practice. The class had spent several months going over the basics of chakra control and, just over a month ago, the teachers had finally stated that their control was sufficient to start learning the three basic techniques that the academy taught to all students; namely clones, transformations and substitution. Naruto had discovered fairly early on that he seemed to have considerably more chakra than the rest of the students for some reason, meaning that he had to do even more chakra control exercises to get his own control up to the same level as the others, something that he had done in the evenings along with his reading, and had even gone further by raiding the academy's small library one evening for additional exercises, such as surface-walking, as he figured that the better his control the more effectively he would be able to utilise the Chimera Technique. All three of the academy's E-rank techniques had been covered together and each afternoon they would all either practice one of them or work on taijutsu with the teachers helping out by giving suggestions to those who needed them or asked for them.

The technique that was being practised that afternoon was the clone technique and it was the only one of the three that the blond was having absolutely no success with. After a great deal of practise, he had been able to generate the illusionary form required by the Transformation Technique but was only able to maintain it for a second or two before it dissipated. He had also recently started having success with the Substitution Technique but his range was terrible and it took so long for him to actually make the swap that it was currently useless. On the other hand, the Clone Technique just seemed to refuse to work for him at all, something that he suspected may have been due to his larger than normal chakra reserves and lack of comparable control.

His taijutsu was not all that bad either, though there were many in the class that were better than him at it. Since he spent most of his time out of the academy either reading or practising ninjutsu to try and build his control, his taijutsu training generally only occurred at the academy. Naruto was currently toying with the idea of a taijutsu style built around utilising knowledge of the opponent's anatomy and exploiting their weak points since that information was required anyway for the Chimera Technique but his investigations in the academy library had not been much use and, as an academy student, he did not have access to the more well-guarded shinobi library. He also couldn't build such a taijutsu style from scratch himself since he had absolutely no idea how he would go about doing it, so instead he focused on the basic style that was taught at the academy with the intent of looking through the shinobi library when he could get inside without any problems.

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><p>Eventually, the academy finished for the day and Naruto made his way back to his home, a term that he had started thinking of the underground base as a few months after he had found it and effectively moved in. Once he had arrived and eaten a little, the blond made his way to the 'experimentation room' as he had dubbed the room with the two large metal tables and other miscellaneous items. One of the tables was still empty but the other held a pair of glass tanks that he had found lying around. One of the tanks contained a large grey rat that he had found scurrying around his bedroom a few days ago and the other had a bat from one of the tunnels. These were the two animals that he was going to use in his first attempt at the Chimera Technique. Whilst both of them had been found mainly due to chance, he had chosen to use them since they were both small mammals and, as such, should be simpler to merge than other creatures that he could find like a cat or bird, especially since he hadn't covered anything concerning the particulars of avian physiology.<p>

Picking up a small metal canister from between the tanks, Naruto placed one end against the air holes in the lid of the tank and twisted the other, causing a cloud of dark gas to descend onto the rat underneath. He repeated the same process with the bat and watched as both animals were soon asleep. The item was something else that had been left when the base was abandoned and it contained a sedative that could be sprayed instead of injected like most. Unfortunately, the tube he was holding was one of only three that he had found and so he had to be careful not to use it all up too quickly. The blond knew that he would eventually have to restock but hopefully that wouldn't happen too soon. He briefly considered the idea of making his own gases, which would be helpful as him buying sedatives would certainly draw attention, and he made a mental note to look into it further at a later time to see if such a thing was worthwhile.

Naruto pulled on a pair of gloves just to be on the safe side and lifted the sleeping rat out of its tank, placing it on the empty table. He put the bat right next to it and made his way through the hand seals that would activate the Chimera Technique, before placing a palm on each of the small animals. After a couple of minutes and a significant drain of his chakra, he thought that the technique had failed and was about to remove his hands when a thin trickle of some strange blue liquid started leak out from under his palm and cover the bat. After a few seconds, the liquid was flowing quicker, though he still wasn't sure exactly where it came from, and both the rat and the bat were covered by thick puddles that quickly joined into a single mass. The unusual liquid then tried to work its way up Naruto's own arms, causing him to panic before he remembered that the technique's nature was to affect everything it could unless it was controlled. The blond then quickly started focusing on making the goo stop covering him and only go for the two animals on the table.

After a few minutes of the liquid slowly but surely making its way up to his elbows, it eventually stopped before receding again. As it did so, Naruto experienced the strange feeling of holding something as it crumbled before he worked out that it was the blue gunk breaking down the bodies of the rat and the bat. As soon as he had that realisation, he quickly closed his eyes and began concentrating on everything he knew of the anatomies of rats and bats and how he imagined they would fit together. He made sure to be as detailed as possible, thinking about things like internal organs and skeletal structures and not just the outward appearance of both animals. As he did, he was again struck by a strange feeling but this time it was of the crumbling object slowly pulling itself back together. The sensation persisted for what felt like an eternity, almost distracting Naruto as he tried to maintain his mental visualisation, until it suddenly disappeared. The sudden change was so surprising that the boy opened his eyes and looked at the pile of blue slime on the table.

The mass was notably smaller than it was before and he was sure he could feel something moving inside. Realising that his test run was complete, he tried to work out how to get rid of the goo before it started to shrink of its own accord back towards his palms. As the puddle slowly receded, Naruto watched with bated breath as the results of his experiment were slowly revealed. A delicate-looking bat wing was the first thing to be uncovered, closely followed by the tip of a wormlike tail. Eventually, the liquid disappeared completely, again making him wonder exactly where it came from, revealing his creation in its entirety. It looked more or less like a large rat with a pair of bat wings emerging from its shoulder blades, exactly as he had pictured it, but the wings were completely still and the rest of being didn't look particularly healthy either. Its front legs seemed underdeveloped when compared to its back ones and they struggled to move around at all. The rear limbs were a bit better as they were actually pushing the hybrid forwards slightly but, based on the laboured breathing, it wasn't an easy thing for it to do. The creature's deformed-looking mouth was wide open as it gulped in as much air as it could but Naruto could tell that it wouldn't last long. He was proven right barely ten seconds later when the winged rodent gave one final wheezing breath before becoming completely still as its life came to an end.

As he picked up his ill-fated creation and placed it in one of the tanks for future study, the blond realised that, despite not living for very long, he had actually succeeded in merging the two animals. That meant that the technique itself was working at least to a degree and it was probably due to his own lack of understanding or chakra control, or both, that he had not been entirely successful. Closing the lid on the tank, he carried it into the container- and book-filled room that he spent most of his time in and, after putting it on a shelf, sat down at the desk. The blond then pulled out his own journal that documented all of his progress and wrote down everything he could about his recent experiment, making sure to cover everything in immense detail, as well as a brief note about looking into making his own sedatives and anything else he may need.

All in all, whilst it was most definitely a step in the right direction, it would take a long time, as well as huge amounts of effort, for him to reach his overall goal of Kekkei Genkai assimilation.

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><p><strong>AN: Not really much else to say here. The next chapter should get posted next weekend and there will be a three year timeskip between this one and that one, with chapter 2 starting off a week before the graduation exams.**


	2. The Kitten and the Graduation Exam

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, it belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.**

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><p><span><strong>Chapter 2: The Kitten and the Graduation Exam<strong>

The red light district, easily the seediest area of the village, was known to almost every resident of Konoha, either due to personal experiences or simply by word of mouth. The only people that lived there were those unfortunate enough to be unable to afford to live elsewhere. Prostitution, drug-dealing and theft were just some of the ways that the residents earned their livings. Generally, the rest of the villagers, both shinobi and civilian alike, avoided the area, only venturing in if they lost their way or were seeking certain services that couldn't be found elsewhere.

At the moment, the streets were considerably emptier than would be expected for eleven o'clock on a Saturday evening, owing mainly to the recent rumours about strange dogs running around at night that always seemed to end with one or more people going missing. Normally, this would prompt the village's ANBU to investigate but, since the people in question tended to be drunks, dealers, thugs or just general lowlifes, nobody seemed to care enough to properly look into it. This meant that only the brave, ignorant or desperate were willing to go out after dark.

Aisha Shisaku was one such individual, willing to work the streets because she couldn't afford not to. This was the reason that the nineteen-year-old could currently be found hanging around a street corner shivering slightly, as her current attire did little to shield from the coldness of the evening, whilst keeping her eyes open for any potential customers. Occasionally, someone would walk past, blatantly ogling her as they did so, but they didn't approach her. That was nothing new; Aisha knew that she was an attractive young woman. Her well-developed body, complete with firm ass, long legs and a more than generous set of breasts, coupled with her luxurious dark brown hair that reached just past her shoulder blades and her innocent-looking face were what made her one of the more popular girls that worked the area and her current attire simply emphasized that attractiveness. She was wearing a short skirt that showed off her slender legs and a low-cut tank top that stopped just below her breasts, revealing both her toned stomach and a sizeable amount of cleavage.

Sighing to herself in annoyance due to not having had a customer for well over an hour, Aisha was about to try her luck elsewhere when she noticed a young man, probably only a few years older than herself, staring at her from across the street. For some reason, that stare made Aisha feel uncomfortable. It was different from the usual stares of barely contained lust and instead reminded her of the way a predator looks at its prey as it decides if they were worth pursuing. However, almost as quickly as she noticed it, the staring stopped, leaving her half-convinced that she had imagined it, and the stranger made his way across the road towards her, allowing her to get a better look at him, not that it accomplished much. He was easily the most nondescript man she had ever seen, short brown hair and matching eyes with slight stubble decorating his lower face. He was slightly taller than she was, about average for a man his age, and wore simple clothing; shirt, trousers, shoes and a jacket, all dark brown or black. As he stood opposite her, he paused slightly as if he was unsure of what to say and Aisha couldn't help the small smile that graced her face. It would seem that this was the first time he had decided to pay for the company of a woman and if she played her cards right she could end up with a new regular.

"See something you like?" Aisha asked with a friendly smile as she noticed the man's eyes roam her body.

"Definitely," he replied, and once again she couldn't help the feeling that he was judging her worth as prey before she shook it off. She needed money and this man was willing to pay her for her services seeing as he was the one who had approached her.

"Good. So what are you looking for? Blowjob? Quick shag? A whole night?" she enquired, already working out how much she would ask for each.

"Why don't we sort out the details on the way?" the stranger suggested, indicating the direction that she had first seen him. "But I think most of the night would suffice."

This caused Aisha to raise an eyebrow in surprise as she followed him across the road. A whole night? That was rare; most would just take a quick shag in a nearby alley. It had been a while since anyone wanted to spend a night with her.

"Most of the night, huh? That ain't going to be cheap, you know," she informed her newest client as they turned a corner. As her mind wandered, trying to come up with ways to please this man enough for him to come back wanting more, Aisha stopped paying attention to where he was leading her and, as a result, blindly followed him into a dark dead-end alley. She was brought out of her thoughts, however, by a sharp pain in the side of her neck and a sudden feeling of tiredness. The last thing she saw before everything went black was her customer-turned-attacker being engulfed in a cloud of smoke.

* * *

><p>As she started to come to, the first thing Aisha noticed was that her entire body felt unusually heavy, so much so that she could barely move her arm when she tried to lift it. The next thing she noticed after trying to come up with a reason for her current inability to move was the sensation of cold metal pressing against the entire back half of her body, which in turn alerted her to the fact that she seemed to be naked as the sensation was uniform and didn't seem to be diminished by clothing anywhere.<p>

Finally, the memories of her recent attack came back to her and Aisha began to panic. Was she the next in the recent string of disappearances? It was rather obvious that she had been kidnapped but she didn't know why. She didn't have anyone who would be willing to pay a ransom for her. Hell, most wouldn't even care that she had gone. Everyone else that had gone missing had never been seen again and that scared her. What was going to happen to her? Was she going to be killed? Tortured? Sold into slavery?

Just as she was about to start hyperventilating, the sound of a heavy door opening and closing drew Aisha's attention to her right. Struggling to turn her head, she saw someone she instantly recognised. How could she not? The whole village knew that individual, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox bound in a human form by the Fourth Hokage after it attacked the village twelve years ago. Just the sight of the creature, even if it currently looked like a young teen, filled Aisha with more terror than waking up naked after being abducted by a stranger ever could. This was a being that had destroyed a fair part of the village and killed a good number of their shinobi and the way it looked at her with cold and emotionless eyes made it even worse. However, despite the terror, a part of her couldn't help but wonder about the small sleeping cat in its arms.

"You're awake," the blond beast muttered to itself, a small amount of surprise in its tone. "Must not have used enough sedative. I'll have to remember that in the future. Oh well, might as well get started." As it made its way towards her, the demon fished out a hand-held voice recorder, set it down on a nearby table and, after hitting the record button, told it the current date.

"The test subjects are a female human in late teens or early twenties and a female housecat, estimated to be between one and four years of age. Both subjects seem to be in good health with no discernible abnormalities or deformities." The demon continued, obviously talking to the voice recorder and not its captive.

At the mention of 'test subjects', Aisha had tried to question her captor, hoping for some elaboration that would ease her growing fears, but she barely had the energy to grunt, let alone hold a conversation. Even if she could get some elaboration, she didn't think it would reassure her. It was blindly obvious that she had been kidnapped to be used in some kind of twisted experiment, especially since the room she was in looked like a textbook example of a mad scientist's laboratory what with the countless different bottles, jars, books and strange equipment filling all of the shelves. The fact that her abductor was the village demon, which didn't appear any worse than a minor annoyance in public, just made it worse. As she noticed the monster finish talking, she watched as it set the still-sleeping cat on her stomach, ran through a few shinobi hand signs and placed its hands on either side of the animal, one on her breasts and the other dangerously close to her crotch. Aisha watched in morbid fascination as gelatinous blue liquid spread from these two points of contact, slowly covering both her and the cat on top of her, and her last thought before being completely engulfed was that she really shouldn't have gone out that evening.

* * *

><p>As the viscous blue slime that accompanied the usage of the chimera-making technique spread out, Naruto completely ignored the expression of pure terror present on the young woman's face, having long since reached the conclusion that if the villagers' treatment of him was considered acceptable then his treatment of the villagers should be treated the same way, not that it was actually known to anyone else. He didn't even think his test subjects felt any real pain when their bodies were being broken down so he actually considered his experiments slightly more humane.<p>

He also never used a child or pregnant woman as a test subject since it just didn't sit right with him to do so, although in the latter case it was more because of the unborn child than the actual woman, and instead stuck with random grownups that nobody would really miss such as vagrants, prostitutes and drug dealers. Children only did bad things to him, like picking on him or simply ignoring him, because they had been told to do so by their parents and as such they couldn't be held accountable for their actions because they simply didn't know any better. Adults, on the other hand, should know full well that their actions to him, a child, should not be accepted by anyone, much less encouraged like he had seen a few times, and that was why he didn't feel any remorse for kidnapping them and effectively ending their lives.

After using the Chimera Technique so much over the last three years, the blond didn't have to focus as much on every little detail anymore, something that was helped by his accrued knowledge of biological functions and the large amount of planning he always did, as a decent amount of the work involved had slowly become a subconscious process, both reducing the overall amount of time the process took and freeing up his concentration so that he could try and ensure that this experiment survived. If it did, then he would have his first successful chimera involving a human, as all of the others either died or were composed entirely of animals, which would not only be a sign of progress but would also mean that he wouldn't have to try and get more test subjects with his graduation only a week away.

After only about ten minutes had passed, Naruto felt the familiar sensation of the merger being completed and retracted the jellylike mass with practised ease. As the gunk receded, he watched as his newest creation was slowly revealed, his mind already going over countless possibilities about what he could have overlooked if it was dead. It turned out that his thoughts were in vain as the revealed figure seemed to be perfectly healthy, albeit unconscious as was the norm. He ran a quick but thorough diagnostic with a simple medical ninjutsu he had picked up and found that, unlike all of his previous attempts at making a chimera out of a human, this one did not seem to have any little flaws that would ultimately prove fatal such as not making the lungs capable of performing efficient gas exchanges or an accidentally split spine.

Happy that his experiment was a success, the blond took the time to actually look over his newest chimera. The being, which was undoubtedly female due to that being the sex of both constituent animals, retained the same humanoid form of the woman he had used. In fact, the only real differences in appearance between the woman before and the chimera now was the pair of cat ears nestled amongst her hair on the top of her head in place of the human ones that were previously on the sides, the slightly altered lower legs reminiscent of a feline that would allow her to walk on the toes and balls of her feet like a cat and the long catlike tail. There was also a layer of dark brown fur, matching the colour of the now almost waist-length hair, covering the forearms, hands, lower legs, feet and tail. Finally, there was a very large tuft of identically-coloured fur situated on the chest that extended out in a vaguely triangular shape with the points near the armpits and navel that Naruto absently noted completely hid the catgirl's large breasts from view. A quick check revealed that the palms of the hands and soles of the feet were hairless, the latter instead having pads like all felines. All of this information was dictated to his voice recorder along with the observation that the face also seemed more feline though he couldn't quite say what made it appear that way. All in all, the newly-created cat-woman could easily pass as a normal person with very little modesty and an unusual passion for cosplaying.

After checking that his newest creation was still unconscious, Naruto quickly started strapping her down to the table with numerous thick leather straps, making absolutely sure that she wouldn't be able to free herself. This was done because there was no way to properly determine how sentient the woman was until she came to and, if she retained all of her human sense, then leaving her unrestrained could prove disastrous as she could possibly escape which would be incredibly problematic for him. With any luck, the catgirl would have the same instinctual desire to obey that all of his other creations did, since apparently a side-effect of the Chimera Technique caused anything made with it to have an ingrained sense of deference to the person who had performed the technique, though this subservience tended to manifest itself a little differently depending on the animals involved, and some of Hiruko's notes made a passing mention of the possibility that a chimera with enough sentience could well be able to resist if not outright ignore that impulse.

Whilst he waited for his newest chimera to regain consciousness, the twelve-year-old seated himself on a stool behind the other table where his journal was waiting. He then occupied himself by transcribing his dictated notes into the book, making sure that everything was as detailed as he could make it since the information could prove useful later on. Even as he wrote everything out, Naruto's mind couldn't help but wander a little, trying to come up with something he could actually use the catgirl for if she proved subservient enough. Pretty much all of the other creatures he had created, despite being practise subjects for the Chimera Technique, still had some use afterwards, though it was usually only in the event of combat and he was still working on some way to actually get them to where he wanted them since having them follow him around just so that they would be there in the event that they were needed was very impractical.

The blond was planning on using his creations in a similar manner to summons, something he had thought could be useful after he had seen an ANBU operative summon a pack of small dogs, but he had yet to figure out how exactly summoning worked so he wasn't having much success. He knew that shinobi had to sign contracts with the animals that they wanted to summon but there was obviously no contract in existence for the chimeras that he created. There were a few notes on summoning dotted around in a few books Hiruko had left behind, but the older shinobi had apparently given up on the idea in favour of accomplishing bloodline assimilation so the information wasn't all that helpful. He was planning on searching the shinobi library after he graduated, and as such actually had permission to be there and by extension a believable excuse should he be caught, to see if there was any information there that he could use to help make a contract, although he doubted that the information would be available to Genin if it was even present at all. All the blond had managed to do with the notes was come up with a pair of incredibly complicated seal arrays that linked together two spaces and had used this to create a reverse summoning scroll that sent anything placed on it to one of the rooms in his home upon activation, that specific room having been heavily reinforced and outfitted with an externally activated gassing system capable of flooding the entire room with a powerful sedative in a matter of minutes. Naruto was actually quite happy that he had managed to do even that since it meant that he didn't have to walk through the village dragging around unconscious animals.

Just as he finished writing out all of his notes, a quiet noise drew his attention to the other table where the feline woman was starting to regain consciousness. Almost immediately, the catgirl realised that she couldn't move and frantically struggled against her bonds, only to get even more worked up when they didn't give. Not wanting his creation to hurt herself, Naruto slammed his journal shut loudly enough to gain her attention and she seemed to relax a little as soon as her amber cat-like eyes landed on him. Taking the slackening of her body as a good sign, the blond slid off of his stool and made his way over, noting both that the catgirl's eyes never left him and that she seemed to get slightly happier as he got closer.

Encouraged by this, he moved a hand closer to her head, keeping away from her mouth and ready to pull it back at a moment's notice in case she tried to bite him, and couldn't help the small smile that appeared when she nuzzled against his palm. When the girl started purring in response to being stroked behind her ear and even started mewing when he stopped, Naruto concluded that the addition of the cat had a bigger effect than he had expected. This result, however, was far from unwelcome as it seemed that the girl's mentality was more or less that of a common housecat and, as such, meant that she probably wouldn't be capable of resisting the instinctual obedience instilled in her. Hell, if the adoration in her eyes whenever she looked at him was any indication, she would probably happily follow any order she could, regardless of what it was, if she thought it would make him happy.

After another half an hour of examining her mental state, during which time it was discovered that the catgirl was incapable of human speech but apparently retained the ability to understand it, Naruto was as confident as he could be that his creation wouldn't be a problem as long as he laid down some ground rules to ensure that she didn't try to follow him when he went outside. Reaching that conclusion, he slowly undid all of the straps holding her to the table, keeping an eye out in case she did in fact decide to attack, and helped her to her feet, where she immediately threw her arms around him and rubbed her cheek against the top of his head in a very cat-like manner, the difference in height sandwiching his face firmly between her large fur-covered breasts.

Once he had managed to extract himself from the surprisingly strong hold and get his breath back, Naruto spent a further thirty minutes observing her behaviour and then took close to another ten explaining the basic rules to the brunette, going over them multiple times to be sure that she understood them completely. Although since he was going to spend the following day going over everything with her in detail, the only rule she really needed to be aware of right then was to not wander around the underground complex by herself as she could end up hurting herself or getting on the wrong side of another of his creations.

With that covered, Naruto decided to turn in for the night as it was approaching four o'clock in the morning. He entered his bedroom and, after slipping his shoes off, climbed into bed, still not bothering to actually change into some kind of sleepwear. He was only mildly surprised when the feline young woman stretched out on top of his duvet, her arms wrapping themselves around him, and awkwardly pulled it out from under her before draping it over her body, not bothering to send her away since he was certain that she would just come back once he was asleep and unable to repeat the order. As the girl rested her head against his chest and entwined her legs with his own, Naruto couldn't help but admit to himself that this was most definitely not what he had expected when he had started planning out his evening.

Still, the contact wasn't completely unwelcome and the thought that someone cared enough about him to hold him in such a manner, even if that care was a result of the Chimera Technique and not entirely natural, made him happier than he could remember being in years. As he unconsciously slid his arms around the woman's torso, the tired blond decided that he should really come up with a name for her since she was far more intelligent than his other creations and, despite how little time had passed since her making, he was starting to like her.

* * *

><p>The following morning, or later that same morning to be more precise, Naruto groggily woke up only to find that he couldn't move at all. The twelve-year-old started panicking slightly, wondering among other things how someone had managed to find him since he slept underground, only to calm down when he caught sight of dark brown fur under his head as the memories of the previous evening came back. Taking stock of everything, he immediately noticed that, instead of the catgirl resting against him like the previous evening, he was now more or less on top of her with his head resting against her chest, which he just attributed to her rolling over and taking him with her. The reason he couldn't move was because the feline woman's arms were wrapped tightly around his torso and her legs were tangled up with his. His body was so intertwined with hers that escape by normal means proved to be impossible for him and she slept through all of his attempts at waking her up, leaving him with the Substitution Technique as his only possible way out. After a couple of false starts, each of which resulted in the girl's hug becoming even tighter to the extent that he actually thought she might end up crushing him to death, the young Uzumaki finally succeeded in replacing himself with the nearby bag containing all of his clothes that needed washing.<p>

Just as he was recovering from the death cuddle, the sleeping perpetrator seemed to sense the change as her eyes slowly opened and looked at the bag in her arms in confusion, before yawning. She frantically looked around the room and only calmed down when she caught sight of her creator, leaping off of the bed and all the way across the room at him in a flying tackle. It was only because the wall was more or less right behind him that Naruto wasn't sent tumbling to the ground from the impact and was instead only a little dazed by the force of the hugging woman. As he mentally went over everything he was planning for the day, he immediately added 'teach catgirl not to tackle him in a flying hug' to the top of the list since he had a strong feeling that it would be a daily occurrence if he didn't.

After having a shower, during which time he watched with amusement as the feline girl seemed torn between joining him to stay close and keeping her distance to avoid the water, and dressing in a clean copy of his normal outfit of simple boots, plain black trousers and a dark navy T-shirt, Naruto led his creation to the storeroom so that he could get something to eat. As they walked, the blond spared several glances at his companion, who kept reaching out with an arm to grab him only to hesitate at the last minute and pull back when she remembered that her master hadn't seemed entirely happy with her earlier actions, as he tried to come up with some kind of name for her. Sadly, the twelve-year-old was not the most imaginative person when it came to naming things so his options were rather limited. In the end, he ended up settling with the name 'Koneko' since it reflected both her cat nature and her somewhat juvenile mentality. By the time the pair arrived at the storeroom, the newly dubbed Koneko was starting to understand that the word was her name as she was responding to it every few tries; the blond reckoned that within a few days reacting to the name would be almost second nature for her.

The storeroom itself contained far more than it had three years ago when he was just starting out. Instead of just a small fridge and a few shelves, it now contained a much bigger refrigerator as well as a large chest freezer that had been an absolute pain to get down there. There was also half a dozen more shelves, a compact stove for heating things and a couple of tables, both for eating at and preparing food on, with a single chair tucked underneath one of them, the sight of which caused the blond to make a mental note to get more seats as soon as possible. One of the tables currently had a large slab of some kind of meat defrosting on a tray on it and Naruto had to swat Koneko's hand away when he saw her reaching for it, since it wasn't thawing for her and it probably wasn't the sort of thing she should be eating anyway. Instead, he took a tin of tuna from one of the shelves and dumped the contents into a dish, sliding it across the table to the now drooling catgirl. Without so much as a cautionary sniff, the brunette devoured the fish and licked the bowl clean before turning her attention back to her creator in the hopes of getting more.

If he wasn't already used to his chimeras having a particularly large appetite, he probably would have been surprised and a little impressed at how quickly Koneko had downed an entire tin of fish. Not having any more tuna available, since all of his other creations preferred different food and he himself didn't eat it much either, Naruto quickly reassured the girl that she would be able to eat more of it, but she would have to wait for him to go out and get some. That seemed to appease her, since she had hugged him once he reiterated again that he would get some more tuna within the next day or two, and after his own simple breakfast, he led the brunette around the rest of the base, and the other one, to familiarise her with everything whilst explaining the various rules that he expected her to follow.

After determining that Koneko was capable of comprehending and carrying out simple and moderately complex tasks, though she did struggle a bit with the very complicated ones, Naruto decided to try training her up to serve as a sort of assistant for him. Whilst she obviously wouldn't be performing any experiments or delicate tasks, she could hopefully look after his other creations as well as the lair as a whole, especially since he would eventually have to go out of the village for days at a time on missions once he graduated from the academy on Friday and thus he would be unavailable to feed the creatures that dwelled in the other part of the complex on those occasions. With that decision in mind, the blond spent the rest of the day teaching Koneko everything he thought she would need to know about looking after the various residents. He even took her round on a tour to meet them all so that she could identify them, though a couple had seemed particularly interested in eating the catgirl instead of being fed by her but a few stern words from him soon put an end to that, since none of them would even consider disobeying a direct order from him just for quick snack.

Apart from that little incident, the only real problem that had occurred was that Naruto needed to teach Koneko how to tell the time and read again as her mind was more or less a blank slate after being subjected to the Chimera Technique and her being able to comprehend written instructions would probably be very useful further down the line. It had taken most of the day to cover the absolute basics of reading, the lessons being made much harder by her inability to speak, but he felt she was making decent progress all things considered, which wasn't all that surprising since she had retained a good portion of her former human intellect.

By the time evening had rolled around, the blond felt confident that the catgirl could become at least somewhat competent at reading within the week and would be up to snuff after about a month of lessons and practice. He had also supervised her first attempt at feeding the other creatures and that had gone fairly smoothly as well, the only significant incident to occur was when one of them had snapped at her when she got too close but she had displayed impressive reflexes by jumping backwards out of the way to the other side of the room. That event had also revealed that the brunette had retractable claws in each finger and toe and possessed the same grace as a cat when she landed on all fours after her impromptu leap ready to fight back if needed. These revelations were the reason that Naruto had coaxed Koneko back onto the table so that he could carry out an incredibly thorough examination of her in case there was anything else that he had missed. Other than discovering that she was a little ticklish in places, he hadn't found anything that he wasn't already aware of and so the mentally exhausted boy decided to go to bed despite it being only a quarter to one in the morning, quickly followed by the still-smiling brunette who was absolutely euphoric at receiving so much praise from her master over the course of the day.

* * *

><p>The next day started in much the same way as the previous one had, with Naruto waking up in Koneko's vicelike embrace, but instead of replacing himself with something to escape, he instead tried to wake the sleeping brunette by gently tickling her side. Whilst that idea did succeed in rousing her, it also caused her to unintentionally extend her claws and scratch his back. The narrow cuts healed themselves in a matter of minutes but it took close to half an hour, and a good ear scratching, for him to convince the worried girl that he didn't blame her and that he was certainly not mad with her. After that, he prepared a quick breakfast for both him and Koneko and then fed all of the other chimeras with her help. With all of that done, the blond quickly pulled on his coat, a loose-fitting grey one with a hood large enough to shadow his entire face that he had started wearing a couple of years ago when he realised that using the Chimera Technique could alter his appearance, as well as a simple scarf-like face mask that could be pulled up to loosely cover his lower face and a pair of sturdy gloves before making his way to the exit nearest to the academy.<p>

A few minutes were spent reassuring the simple-minded catgirl that he was not abandoning her and would return later that day with more tuna for her, something that she was quickly growing very fond of if the small dribble of drool was any indication. He also made sure that she understood that she was not to go outside under any circumstances and that she remembered the various safety rules he had drilled into her the previous day so that she would not accidentally hurt herself if her curiosity got the better of her. Once all of that was done, Naruto slipped up through the hatch, sealing it behind him, and quickly made his to the academy whilst taking care not to be seen since him being in that part of the village so early would be considered unusual as his apartment was in completely the other direction to the exit he was using.

Naruto arrived at the academy with only moments to spare, he actually passed both of the teachers in corridor on his way, and had only just reached his seat when the two Chunin entered. Not much had changed during the last three years at the academy, or at least not much that he actually cared about. Sure, the students had all gotten older and the Inuzuka boy had acquired a puppy at some point but ultimately everyone was still more or less the same. This was proved barely a minute after Iruka finished taking attendance as the Yamanaka girl and the pink-haired civilian barged into the room arguing about who got there first and thus who could sit next to the still power-hungry Uchiha, regardless of the fact that he was sitting alone at the end of a three-person desk. This still occurred practically every day, to the extent that neither of them were ever marked as absent until the other showed up or ten minutes passed, except for the rare days when one of them had the idea of getting there early and waiting for Sasuke, though they always reverted back to their stupid race the day after as they didn't want to keep get up so early.

Once the two fangirls were properly scolded and seated, Iruka began explaining what they would be doing for the rest of the week before the graduation exam on Friday. Since all of the information had already been covered, the next four days were essentially going to be a large recap to make sure that everyone remembered everything, as well as practice ninjutsu, taijutsu and weapons accuracy in case anyone was having any last minute problems that needed fixing. It went without saying that Naruto soon found himself extremely bored as all of his research for the Chimera Technique had led to him developing very good memory and recollection skills and, as such, he could recall most of the information that they had been taught, regardless of how useless he thought most of it would be out in the field. Seriously, what was the point of teaching them about the history of the village or the reigns of the different Hokages? Sure, it could be interesting but he seriously doubted he would ever need to know exactly how long ago Konoha was founded or how many years the Second Hokage was in charge before he sacrificed himself so that his students could escape a squad of Kumo ninja.

By the time the class was dismissed for lunch, the blond was on the verge of falling asleep from boredom and it was only his wandering mind that kept him awake as it thought out various possibilities for future chimeras as well as what else he needed to do before he used the technique to improve himself. Successfully creating Koneko was all well and good, but she didn't possess the same sentience as a human, though she was surprisingly aware, and since she was the only attempt at a human chimera that had survived, he couldn't be sure that it wasn't a fluke until he did a few more experiments. There was also the fact that creating something with a fully functional chakra system was immensely difficult and the closest he had come so far was making something that was capable of releasing surges of the energy throughout its entire body at will. This meant that until he did some tests with people with active chakra networks, which pretty much limited him to shinobi or academy dropouts, he would avoid doing anything with his own body in case he accidentally damaged his chakra network, something that would be nigh impossible to fix and require a very good explanation as well. The only reason any of his creations had actually survived was because a fully developed chakra system wasn't actually necessary for something to live; they just needed to have actual chakra in their bodies as well as the capacity to produce it so that they wouldn't run out and die.

The lessons after lunch were actually less mind-numbing than those from the morning but that was only because they involved practical activities that were actually relevant for a shinobi. Even though he was ultimately planning on using his various creations to fight, he still didn't like the idea of others doing all of the work for him and, as such, paid attention to the hands-on lessons and made sure to set aside some time for practise. Despite how much of his time was spent researching or experimenting with the Chimera Technique, Naruto was still able to develop a more than passing level of proficiency in all three areas of taijutsu, ninjutsu and weapon accuracy, though he knew that there were still several students in the class that were better than he was, even if he hadn't deliberately performed worse than he could.

Eventually, the lessons ended for the day and Naruto immediately began the walk back home, not being delayed by having any friends that he needed to say goodbye to. He had to double back slightly when he remembered that he had promised to pick up some tuna for Koneko after he had walked past the shops, but other than that he got back without any problems occurring. His feet had barely touched the floor of what could be considered his living room, namely the one that had all of the tanks and books he had encountered when he had first stumbled across the place, when the brunette catgirl appeared in front of him and wrapped him in a bone-crushing hug, clearly very happy that he was back.

It seemed that she had not coped all that well with his absence as it took a good deal of coaxing to get her to release him and even then she made sure that he was always within arm's reach at all times; hopefully she would reach the point that she wouldn't mind his absence too much before he started going out of the village on overnight missions. The rest of the evening consisted of Naruto carrying on Koneko's reading lessons as well as getting her used to the various tasks that he was planning on having her do whenever he was unavailable, though there had been a few breaks where he thought about different chimera ideas as well as the possibility of using some kind of seal array to maintain some semblance of control if he ever created a useful but difficult to manage chimera whilst the brunette sat in his lap snuggling up against him.

* * *

><p>Naruto was immensely happy by the time Friday eventually came, even if he didn't outwardly show it. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday had all turned out to be practically identical to Monday; in that he had woken up wrapped in Koneko's arms, spent several minutes trying to get free, endured an incredibly boring morning followed by a slightly less boring afternoon, and then carried on the catgirl's various lessons and training in the evening. All that had really happened over the last three days was that the blond was getting a better understanding of how not to wake the catgirl, though he hadn't yet found a way to get her up that didn't involve ninjutsu or some form of minor injury. Speaking of the feline woman, she was progressing quite well with her reading, now able to competently follow simple written instructions without much difficulty, and he had started teaching her what little she would need to know about food preparation, which was generally just how to use knives safely without cutting herself since he wasn't going to get her to make his food and his various chimeras really weren't picky about what they ate as long as it was meat.<p>

Currently, young Uzumaki was sat in his usual seat at the back of the classroom in the academy waiting for the teachers to arrive so that he could take the graduation exam. Whilst he didn't have any real attachment to the village, he was still going to be a shinobi for it even though the main reason he had enrolled at the academy in the first place was in the hopes of getting some training so that he could defend himself. If he became a shinobi then he would eventually be able to go on missions out of the village and, with any luck, he would encounter some interesting Kekkei Genkai that he could possibly assimilate.

Unfortunately, he couldn't just up and leave the village by himself as the last time he had tried that, when he was six or seven, he had quickly been brought back by a small group of ANBU and then scolded by the Hokage who had told him that it was dangerous beyond the safety of the village's walls, especially for someone as young as him. Whilst he had accepted that back then, he had since started wondering why a squad of ANBU, the village's elite forces, had been sent out to retrieve a young runaway child. Surely, it wasn't normal for the highly skilled shinobi to be sent out for such a simple reason and so there had to have been something particularly important about him to warrant such actions, though he had absolutely no idea what that could be. Still, he had since been able to go out for brief trips using some of his home's secret exits and had made several visits to nearby towns for a couple of hours before returning so that his absence was not noticed.

Eventually, Iruka and Mizuki arrived and, after the usual head-enlarging genjutsu to shut everyone up, the details of the graduation exam were explained. The first part would be a two hour written test to see how much of the information given over the years had actually sunk in. After that, there would be a small break before heading outside for the taijutsu portion which would test their proficiency with the basic style taught at the academy by having each student having a quick spar against one of the teachers. Apparently, they used to pair the students up for this bit but it was found to be easier to determine each student's skill if they were all going against opponents of the exact same level, which would be the teachers who were obviously going to holding at the level of an average Genin back to gauge the students' abilities. Once the taijutsu part was complete, there would be a larger break for lunch and then everyone would return outside to the firing range to test their accuracy. The final part was a ninjutsu exam which would primarily be a test of the student's chakra control, something that wouldn't be a problem for Naruto as he was already capable of walking on water after sneaking into the library one night for more chakra control exercises, as the techniques themselves were simple enough. Once this last bit was done, the teachers would add up the student's scores across all four segments, as well as their grades from the last few years, and then either pass the student and give them a Konoha forehead protector or fail them with the option to try again the following year.

The questions on the test weren't all that difficult, though some people seemed to be having some problems and Naruto immediately labelled them as stupid idiots that he doubted would be able to pass the overall exam if they were struggling with basic information recall. Despite the test being fairly straight-forward, it still took Naruto almost all of the allotted time to complete it, though that was mainly due to him still being rather tired after he had had to stay up much longer than he would of liked to deal with a problem with one of his chimeras, and even then he found it so monotonous that he didn't really put much effort into it aside from making sure he had a passing grade.

Once the written test was finally done, the class was given a short ten minute break before the taijutsu aspect of the exam. Most students took this time to either go to the toilet or chat with their friends about the various questions from the test that they had trouble with, whereas Naruto simply spent the time waking up properly. After the break was over, and he was considerably more alert than he was when he had shambled into the classroom at the beginning of the day, the entire class was led outside for the first of what the blond considered to be the worthwhile tests.

The test was effectively nothing more than a brief taijutsu-only spar, meaning no ninjutsu, genjutsu or weapons but chakra enhancement was permitted, against one of the teachers whilst the other watched and graded the student on their performance. The maximum duration of each spar was five minutes but if either participant was thrown out of the ring or somehow incapacitated then it would be considered over at that point. Obviously, throwing their opponent out of the ring or incapacitating them would result in a higher grade for the student and the inverse, being forced out of the arena or incapacitated, would mean a lower score but it was the overall performance that was graded so even if the student wasn't able to pull off such a decisive win they would still get a good score if they showed sufficient skill.

Since the students were tested in alphabetical order based on surname, Naruto knew that he was going to be the penultimate student to fight since only Ino Yamanaka's name followed his on the register. With that, the blond simply sat down in the shadow of one of the trees that surrounded the field and resigned himself to watching the others fight. If nothing else, he might be able to get some kind of insight on what sort of moves the teachers favoured, which could help him when his turn eventually came around.

As they worked their way through the various students, Naruto absently noted that all of the shinobi children were doing far better than their civilian-born counterparts, even the cripplingly shy Hyuga girl held out longer than most of them, and a few of them even managed to knock their opponent out of the ring. He figured this was due to the students having extra training from their clan members to help them, or clan library in Sasuke's case since there were currently no other Uchiha in the village. He also noticed that the teachers were switching roles after every four or five bouts, with the fighter taking over the observations and the spectator entering the ring. This irregular arrangement meant that Naruto couldn't calculate which of the two Chunin he was actually going to fight until three quarters of the class had already been tested, when it appeared that he was going to be facing Iruka as, when he had switched roles with Mizuki, there were two more students after the current one before him, so he would be the scarred Chunin's fourth opponent.

This was something that the blond was happy with since, even though the scarred man wasn't necessarily kind to him, he at least treated all of the students equally, unlike Mizuki who he could tell really didn't like him and, if his suspicions were true, the man had even sabotaged some of his work so he would get a lower grade than he deserved. Unfortunately for him, Sasuke Uchiha, who had been Iruka's third opponent, had managed to get a very lucky strike in on the Chunin's arm that meant that he would not be an ideal condition to carry out the last two spars without some, admittedly minor, medical attention and, since they were getting a little pressed for time, Mizuki would have to take over for Naruto's and Ino's tests whilst he observed. The white-haired man had looked quite happy when Iruka had announced that he would have to step in to replace him, though he quickly hid the somewhat sadistic smirk before anyone could notice it.

Standing across the ring from Mizuki, Naruto calmly adopted the basic opening stance of the academy's simple taijutsu style and, instead of rushing in like most of the others had before him, instead opted to wait for his opponent to come to him. After just a few seconds, Mizuki realised that the blond wasn't going to make the first move and charged at the teen at speeds slightly faster than had been used against the other students with a fist aimed at his head. Naruto dodged the incoming attack by rolling to the side and tried to sweep the man's legs out from under him with one of his own reinforced limbs. The experienced ninja easily avoided the low blow and countered by kicking the teen before he had a chance to get up. The strike landed but most of the force was absorbed by the blond's chakra-filled forearms that he had placed in the way and all it really did was send him rolling across the ring, giving him just enough space to jump to his feet and block the fist than would have otherwise buried itself in his stomach.

This back and forth continued for the next three minutes, with Naruto failing to land a proper blow and Mizuki's strikes either getting narrowly dodged or blocked. At this point, the blond was starting to get a little fed up of how the teacher wasn't holding himself back as much as he had for the others, though it wasn't by too much so it was a little difficult to notice. Since it was becoming obvious to him that he wouldn't be able to actually land a punch or kick, he instead decided to be a little sneaky and, after being sent to the ground again to avoid an arm, scooped up a small amount of soil in his gloved hand. As he climbed to his feet, the teen threw earth at the teacher's face, who was too surprised by the dirty tactic to react quickly enough to avoid it.

With the man temporarily blinded, Naruto sent a quick punch at his solar plexus, easily determining its exact location without much thought, before he could get the soil out of his eyes. This winded him enough to allow the teen to follow up with a knee to the groin, something that had every male watching instinctively covering their own crotches, and then a palm strike to the forehead. This last hit, coupled with the others and his still impaired eyesight, caused Mizuki to stumble backwards as he tried to keep his balance, his feet just crossing the edge of the arena and causing Iruka to call the match in Naruto's favour just as the white-haired man cleared his eyes. As he walked out of the ring, the teen did his best to ignore both the glare of pure hatred from his defeated opponent and the looks of pure surprise from the rest of his class, though he did hear a couple of people shouting that his stunt with the soil should count as cheating so he should be disqualified for it.

"Whilst it was definitely a dirty tactic, the rules of the match only forbade the use of ninjutsu, genjutsu and weapons," Iruka called out, effectively putting a stop to the complaints. "In a fight against a superior opponent, sometimes your only chances of victory lie in the more underhanded methods, as Naruto just demonstrated. Still, I have to admit that I'm surprised since this is the best performance you've ever demonstrated," he continued, with the last comment being directed at Naruto, who had by now returned to his seat under the tree.

The blond in question just shrugged his shoulders in a noncommittal fashion as he didn't want to mention that he deliberately downplayed his abilities in class. Before anyone else could say anything, Iruka called the Yamanaka girl up for her turn and the final spar of the day began. The fight wasn't all that impressive since, despite being more skilled than the majority of kunoichi hopefuls in the class, she just didn't lacked the physical strength to do any real damage and instead spent the entire duration dodging every strike sent her way until one of them succeeded in knocking her out of the ring. With the taijutsu portion of the exam finally complete, the students were dismissed for an hour with the instruction to not be late for the weapons accuracy test as it could count against them.

Naruto took advantage of this break to return to his home, where he was again immediately hugged by a delighted Koneko, who was slowly getting used to him being out for long periods of time but still missed him immensely and made up for his absences by never leaving him whilst he was present. After sliding a plate of sushi across the table to the hungry catgirl, who then proceeded to devour it in mere minutes, he ate his own lunch and started wondering why Mizuki had gone harder on him than the others. Sure, he knew the man didn't like him for some reason, probably the same one as the rest of the villagers, but that didn't explain why he'd take the risk of effectively sabotaging his test, since he would surely get into trouble for that if he had been caught. By the time he had to leave to get back to the academy, Naruto still couldn't come up with anything that seemed likely and simply opted to keep an eye on the man to see if he would try anything else.

He was the last one to make it back to the academy, arriving exactly as the hour-long break ended. After being admonished by Iruka for cutting it so close, the blond retook his seat under the same tree as the teacher explained how the weapons accuracy part of the exam was going to be handled. It was simple enough, each of them would get ten kunai and ten shuriken and have two human-shaped targets to throw them at with the intention of one being used for the kunai and the other for shuriken. The targets themselves had several areas marked on them which denoted areas that would cause death or serious incapacitation if struck with a blade, the areas considered as kill zones were marked in red and the incapacitation areas were indicated with yellow. The students would earn three points for each weapon that landed in a red zone, two for each in a yellow zone and one for any that missed both zones but still hit the target, meaning that there was a total of thirty points available for the kunai and thirty for the shuriken.

Since there were two teachers present and neither of them was required to act as a practice dummy, the students would be tested in pairs, with Iruka grading one and Mizuki the other, and it was again done in alphabetical order. Much like the taijutsu test, the clan-raised children did better than the civilian-born students, the former usually scored a minimum of around forty-five between the two different weapons whilst the latter usually did noticeably worse, with one girl getting a pitiful score of eleven after missing all of the red and yellow sections and even missing the actual target in more than a few cases. Eventually, after a random civilian boy and Sasuke Uchiha finished their throwing, the second getting the best result so far of fifty-three with every kunai and shuriken hitting one of the coloured sections, it was the turn of Naruto and the Yamanaka.

Much to his hidden displeasure, Naruto was stuck with Mizuki whilst Iruka watched over Ino's attempts and he couldn't help but raise an eyebrow in confusion under his hood when he saw the equipment he was supposed to use. Half of the kunai were off-balance, with the handle being heavier than it should be, and several of both them and the shuriken had slightly blunted edges, which he found out after taking a glove off, with the excuse that his hand was getting a little too warm, and running a finger along one. Even though he knew that he should complain about the quality of the weapons, the blond was admittedly curious about what the Chunin was attempting to do and so he kept it to himself and acted like he hadn't noticed. After adjusting for the deficiencies of the weapons, he threw them at the targets one after another and earned himself a passable score of thirty-two. He could have done better but decided to play it safe since it was becoming blindingly obvious to him that Mizuki wanted him to fail for some reason, his suspicions being confirmed when he glanced at the man out of the corner of his eye and saw the frown.

With that done, he returned to his spot under the tree just as Iruka called for everyone to head inside for the ninjutsu exam, even though it could easily have been done outside. After everyone was back in the classroom, the students were called out into the room next door, one by one, and either returned with proud smiles and a Konoha headband or expressions of disappointment, with one girl actually being on the verge of tears. Eventually, Naruto's turn came and he walked into the testing room where Iruka and Mizuki were both sat behind a desk with several forehead protectors lined up in front of them.

"Alright, Naruto. First, we want you to perform the Substitution Technique to avoid this blunted kunai," Iruka explained, holding up the item in question. "Then you have to transform into myself, Mizuki and then the Third Hokage and finally produce at least three clones. Is that clear?"

"Completely," Naruto responded. Barely a moment later, Iruka threw the kunai at him only to hit the chair that the blond had replaced himself with. The two teachers noted something down on their clipboards as he returned to his original position. He then took on the three forms he had been told too, with both Chunin grading him on how detailed he was and penalising any discrepancies. Finally, he ran through the hand signs for the Clone Technique, which he had eventually managed to make a compromise with after ridiculous amounts of painstakingly repetitive practise; said compromise being that whilst he could produce clones, he could only do so in large quantities. As the clouds of smoke that accompanied the usage of the technique appeared, Naruto felt a small wave of chakra wash over him and, when the smoke cleared, he was surrounded by four flawless clones and half a dozen pathetic duplicates that would never be able to pass as him.

"Unfortunately, Naruto, whilst those four clones are perfect replicas, we will have to knock some points off for the others. You'll still get a decent mark but it would have been higher if you'd only made those," Iruka explained, indicating the quartet of faultless doppelgangers. After looking over everything on his clipboard and making a few more notes, the scarred Chunin returned his attention to the blond. "Congratulations, Naruto Uzumaki. You have passed the Academy Graduation Exam, here's your headband. Please return to the classroom as there will be an announcement after we've done Ino's test," the man said with a polite smile, passing the boy a forehead protector.

Naruto took the offered item, again noting Mizuki's quickly hidden scowl, and went back into the classroom, sidestepping the nervous Ino who was waiting by the door. Around five minutes later, the girl returned with her own headband fastened around her waist and followed by the two teachers.

"Congratulations to everyone that's passed the exam and for those that didn't quite make it, there's always next year. Everyone's final scores have been posted on the board outside the classroom so feel free to have a look since I'd rather not be mobbed by students wanting to know exactly how well they did," Iruka began, the momentary shudder than ran down the man's back suggesting that that had actually happened at some point. "You all get the next week off so make the most of it as you probably won't get all that much free time once you start active duty. Team assignments will be a week on Monday at nine o'clock, don't be late. You are all dismissed." The words had barely left his mouth when he had to jump out of the way to avoid the stampede of students who were all eager to see how well they had done compared to their friends.

Naruto himself left at a far more sedate pace, completely bypassing the bustling crowd as they pushed each other out of the way to get to the board first, and looked over someone's shoulder at the list. Seeing that he was one of the last students listed, and thus had one of the lowest overall grades out of everyone that passed, Naruto smiled to himself as he made his way out of the building, his mind already coming up with a few things he could do to occupy himself for the next couple of weeks. Just as he reached the main gates, the blond was brought out of his thoughts by some placing their hand on his shoulder to get his attention. Turning his head, he saw the smiling face of Mizuki who seemed quite happy that he had caught up with him before he could disappear.

"Sorry if I made you jump, Naruto, but I'm here to offer you a chance to improve your overall ranking. Every year, if the teachers think that there's a student who didn't do as well as they believed that they were capable of, they'd give that student the option of taking a fake mission as a form of extra credit that would increase their grade if they were successful," the white-haired man said. "In this case, despite getting one of the lowest grades in the class, I believe that, with the proper opportunity, you could easily rise to the upper half, even though Iruka doesn't seem to think so. So, how about it?"

"What sort of mission would it be?" Naruto replied, doing his best to sound interested even though he seriously doubted such a thing existed and even if it did, he was quite happy with being ranked so low. Still, he wanted to know why the man had tried so many times to get him to fail, so he might as well play along.

"Unfortunately, in keeping with standard practice, we can't reveal the details unless the student agrees to take it in case they decline and we offer it to someone else," Mizuki explained, looking apologetic.

"Sure, why not? My grades aren't going to drop if I fail, right?"

"No, your current grades are safe but they could go up depending on how well you do. The mission is to sneak in to the Hokage's personal library without getting caught and take the Forbidden Scroll of Seals, although for the purposes of this test, it will obviously be replaced with a decoy. Once you get the scroll, I want you to meet me here at eight o'clock this evening," the white-haired Chunin elaborated as he handed Naruto a scrap of paper with some directions written on it that led somewhere into the forest surrounding the village. "As an added bonus, there are a few techniques written in the decoy and if you can successfully learn one of them, your grade will increase even more and you might even be able to get to the top of the class. Anyway, that's it for the mission briefing, good luck and don't forget to avoid detection."

As Mizuki disappeared in a cloud of smoke indicative of the Body Flicker Technique, Naruto found his interest peaked by this latest development. Mizuki wanted the Forbidden Scroll of Seals and he wanted Naruto to do it instead of trying to steal it himself. It was quite a clever idea since, if he was successful, then the Chunin would have the scroll just like he wanted and if he failed, Mizuki could easily deny all involvement in the plan and leave him with all of the blame. Unfortunately for him, Naruto wasn't naive enough to believe that the extra credit mission actually existed. Still, he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to get a look at something that sounded so interesting and he could always let some of his pets have fun with the would-be traitor.

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><p><strong>AN: This chapter ended up being considerably larger than I was expecting (I was aiming for somewhere in the six to eight thousand word region) but the only other place that seemed appropriate for ending it would have resulted in the chapter being more or less devoted to Koneko's introduction, which I didn't want despite her being needed to avoid some minor issues. (The main one was the question of who would feed Naruto's various chimeras whilst he was out of missions, but she also serves as living proof of successful human testing of the Chimera Technique, which I feel Naruto would want before he even contemplates using it on himself.) Regarding chapter length, please don't expect future chapters to be quite as long as this one, though I'm going to try and ensure that they are at least around six or seven thousand words.**

**Also, before anyone gets any ideas, though some of you probably already have, the relationship between Naruto and Koneko is strictly a mix of Master/Servant and Owner/Pet, there is nothing else between them. The reason Koneko acts the way she does around him is because the instinctual subservience that was ingrained into her as a side-effect of the Chimera Technique manifested itself in the form of extreme adoration, meaning that her world now effectively revolves around Naruto and his continued happiness, which is why she sticks to him like glue when he's around and gets sad when he goes out.**

**Naruto himself isn't all that bothered that her overly affectionate displays because a) he knows that she will never to anything to intentionally hurt him, b) he knows that if he told her to stop she would get unhappy and c) despite that fact that he will probably never willingly admit it, he enjoys the contact and the feeling that someone cares about him (even though he is completely aware that said care is unnatural) because he never had anything like that whilst growing up. It also helps that all of his research into the human body has more or less desensitised him to the potential appeals of the female form.**

**Finally, I'm not sure when the next chapter will be up since, unlike last time where I already had a solid six or seven thousand words written for this chapter when I posted the first one, I only have around fifteen hundred words of chapter 3 done so far. The next chapter should be more entertaining than this one as it will cover the Forbidden Scroll Incident, **the week between it and team assignments, the team assignments themselves and maybe even the Genin test as well, though the last one is somewhat dependent on how long the rest of it ends up being.****


	3. Mizuki's Downfall

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, it belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.**

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><p><span><strong>Chapter 3: Mizuki's Downfall<strong>

Sitting with his back resting against a tree, Naruto couldn't help but feel amazed at how easy it had been to steal the large scroll that was currently spread out on the ground in front of him. Sure, Mizuki had helped him out by giving him a map as well as some information on the guard pattern, which he explained away as something that would have been gathered by spies beforehand if it had been a real mission, but even with that, the idea that an academy student had proved capable of getting in and then getting out again with the kinjutsu-filled scroll was ridiculous. The Hokage really needed to either increase the security measures or, preferably, move the dangerous item to a more secure, and less well-known, location where nobody would think to find it. It wasn't a good sign that, after he had entered the building, Naruto had only encountered one set of guards and they had been surprisingly easy to avoid.

The blond had arrived at the clearing chosen by the Chunin just under thirty minutes ago after having stopped off at his home to sort some things out, and had already learned one of the ninjutsu techniques from the scroll, although he was a little surprised that the Shadow Clone Technique was considered dangerous enough to warrant being listed, but he supposed that the warnings concerning its large-scale variant were enough for it to count. The idea of the Forbidden Scroll of Seals overall seemed a little strange to him; why bother keeping a written record of these techniques, including detailed instructions on how to perform them, if they were that dangerous? Surely, it would be safer to simply let the techniques be forgotten?

Still, he wasn't going to complain since he got an interesting-looking clone technique out of it, which could prove to be very useful if the comment about mental feedback was any indication. Naruto had also come across an experimental medical ninjutsu of some kind that had been developed by Tsunade Senju of the Sannin and some information on the Eight Gates, which were eight specific places in the chakra network where there were limiters that could be forcefully removed to temporarily boost the user's power at the cost of damaging their body, with the level of damage increasing with each gate that was opened. Despite the risks associated with these last two, all three had been copied down onto a blank scroll that had been brought along for just such a reason as they all looked like they could be useful.

Since he couldn't practice the medical ninjutsu, which was called the Phoenix Renewal Technique, without something to try it out on and he hadn't wanted to try anything with the Eight Gates when Mizuki could pop up at any time without warning, Naruto had instead started working on the Shadow Clone Technique once he had copied out everything he wanted to. Much to his surprise, the B-ranked technique had been quite simple to get down, taking no more than fifteen minutes at most, and its A-ranked large-scale variant had only required getting used to utilising extremely large amounts of chakra to be able to properly use.

With that done, the teen had then spent some time looking over the other things that were written in the scroll and he couldn't help but be impressed by the sheer diversity of all of the techniques, which ranged from being able to resurrect the dead at the cost of a living sacrifice to summoning the Shinigami to seal something away in exchange for the user's soul. The latter of these had been completely ignored since he couldn't think of any situation where he would ever offer his own life to seal away someone else though the former had held his interest right up until he had read about the condition in which the person was resurrected. The blond had initially been interested in the possibility of resurrecting someone with an otherwise extinct Kekkei Genkai to assimilate them but the description heavily implied that the reincarnated individuals didn't actually possess their own biological bodies, instead using the bodies of the sacrifices that were encased in ash to alter their appearances. This meant that the Chimera Technique wouldn't be of any use in acquiring the abilities of these revived shinobi as he would only end up assimilating the sacrifice instead.

Naruto was interrupted from these thoughts by the sound of one of the nearby bushes rustling. He glanced over, expecting to see Mizuki, but was more than a little surprised when Iruka emerged instead with the angriest expression he had ever seen on the scarred Chunin's face.

"Naruto! What the hell were you thinking? Why would you steal the Forbidden Scroll and set off all of those explosives?" the irate man shouted, eliminating any possibility that the extra credit assignment was legitimate, even if the blond hadn't believed it anyway.

"Mizuki-sensei told me about the extra credit assignment that could boost my grades if I did it right," Naruto explained, deciding to go with a half-truth. "He told me that if I could steal this scroll from the Hokage's library and bring it here without getting caught my overall grades would go up and I wouldn't be at the bottom anymore." He didn't bother mentioning that he didn't believe the Chunin and only played along to get a look at the Forbidden Scroll and possibly find out why Mizuki disliked him so much. "Wait, what explosives?" he asked, when the final part of Iruka's angry shouting finally registered.

"Mizuki? Why would he...? Unless he...? But that would mean..." Iruka muttered to himself, clearly very confused by what he had been told.

"Hey! What explosives?!" Naruto shouted once it became clear that he his previous question was going to go unanswered due to the teacher's confusion.

"Huh? A little before the scroll was discovered to be missing, several explosives were set off across the village. Most of the shinobi are currently dealing with the damage that was caused and helping the civilians that were injured by the blasts. It was believed that they were meant as a distraction for whoever took the scroll so that they could get away more easily."

"I didn't do that! All I did was take the scroll like Mizuki-sensei told me to," the blond stated, trying to play the part of naive schoolchild. Inwardly, he was actually surprised that the white-haired Chunin was capable of coming up with such a plan. It would certainly have helped the man to flee the village if most of the active forces were preoccupied. Suddenly, the man in question appeared at the far side of the clearing, having jumped down from a tree, with a pair of huge shuriken on his back and immediately noticed that there was more than just Naruto present and that his plan could soon fall apart.

"What are you doing here, Iruka?" Mizuki asked, discreetly palming a pair kunai in case he needed them. "I thought we agreed that I'd be the one grading Naruto's assignment. I hope you're not trying to intervene so he fails," he continued, desperately hoping that the blond was dumb enough to believe that Iruka was just trying to get him to mess up the bogus extra credit test.

"Stop lying, Mizuki! I know you tricked Naruto into stealing the scroll," Iruka shouted, taking out his own kunai in response to his fellow Chunin's action. He hadn't wanted to believe that his friend could do something like this but the evidence was clear in front of him.

The white-haired man glanced at Naruto, trying to gauge which of the two he believed, and saw that the blond had stood up at some point and now had the giant scroll fastened up and slung over his shoulder, his own kunai in hand as he glared at him. Seeing that the boy was siding with Iruka instead of him, he knew that the game was up and threw his knives at the pair. They were easily deflected by Iruka's own but it still allowed him to leap back and into the trees.

"Naruto, stay back!" the scarred instructor ordered, determined to deal with his traitorous former friend. However, before he could say anything else, more knives, well over a dozen this time, were sent flying at both him and Naruto. Iruka immediately pushed the boy out of the way but was too slow to dodge the incoming storm of metal himself and, as a result, was hit by several of them as he was thrown against the side of the small cabin nearby.

With Iruka temporarily indisposed due to all of the kunai sticking out of him, Mizuki turned his attention back to his main target, the Forbidden Scroll of Seals that was still resting against Naruto's back. Knowing that he wouldn't be able to convince the blond to hand over the scroll peacefully, the traitor resorted to his back-up plan of killing him and taking it from his corpse. He unfastened one of the giant shuriken from his back and, after spinning it up to speed, hurled it at the boy fast enough that he, as an academy student, shouldn't be able to dodge it.

Seeing the large throwing star heading straight for him, Naruto was about to leap out of the way when he was tackled from his right. He looked up and saw the beat-up form of Iruka shielding him with his own body, the shuriken embedded deep in his back.

"Well, isn't this a surprise? Iruka's protecting the little demon," Mizuki shouted, a little surprised by the other Chunin's actions. "Why would you protect the beast that killed your family?"

"What do you mean? I haven't killed Iruka's family," Naruto protested, whilst mentally going over everybody he had kidnapped for his Chimera Technique. He seriously doubted that any of them were related to Iruka since they were all homeless or general lowlifes, or a prostitute in the case of the woman that had later become Koneko, and even if one of them was related to him, no-one should be aware that he was the one responsible.

"I guess you don't remember it. It's not much of a surprise since you killed so many on that day," Mizuki continued, already imagining the broken expression that would appear when the blond learned what he truly was. "Though, I suppose that it's possible that the Fourth Hokage's seal could have caused you to forget what you really are."

"Stop! Don't say another word!" Iruka shouted as he slowly climbed to his feet. Even though his injuries were taking their toll on him, especially the shuriken in his back, he glared at his former colleague and threw a kunai at him in a desperate attempt to stop him from revealing the truth.

"Now now, Iruka, the beast deserves to know what it really is," Mizuki chided, sidestepping the projectile with ease. "Naruto! You remember the story from class about how the Fourth Hokage gave his life to defeat the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox that attacked twelve years ago, right? The truth is that that story is a lie! The fox was never defeated! Instead, the Fourth Hokage gave his life to seal the beast into a baby with a forbidden technique," he continued, watching as the blond put the pieces together for himself. "That baby was you! You are the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox!"

With his piece said, the traitorous shinobi sent a volley of regular shuriken at the shell-shocked blond with the intention of killing him whilst he was struggling to deal with the recent revelation. However, when the blades hit their mark, the boy was engulfed in a cloud of smoke which soon dissipated to reveal a small log.

"Naruto! If you can hear me, you have to take that scroll back to the village and get it to the Hokage! Tell him everything that's happened here!" Iruka called out, not even knowing if the blond was still around to hear him.

Since his target wasn't there anymore, Mizuki leapt out of the clearing to try and find the boy before he could return his prize to the village. He didn't even spare Iruka a glance since it was clear that his injuries were severely hampering his movements as he looked like he was about to collapse at any minute.

* * *

><p>After evading the hail of knives, the blond quickly fled, though he did make sure not to get too close to the village. He honestly didn't know how to react to Mizuki's claim that he was the Nine-Tails. On the one hand, he could have been lying about it but, on the other hand, it would certainly explain why the villagers hated him so much as well as being important enough to warrant ANBU being sent out to retrieve him when he had ran away all those years ago; after all, any shinobi village would do their utmost to ensure that they retained possession of arguably the strongest being in the world.<p>

After a few more minutes thinking about it, during which time the traitor's words were replayed though his mind over and over again, he eventually noticed that Mizuki had said that the fox was sealed inside him as a baby through the use of a forbidden technique before proclaiming that he was the fox incarnate. At that thought, his mind automatically drifted back to the only forbidden sealing technique he had ever come across, namely the Dead Demon Consuming Seal that was depicted in the very scroll he was carrying. Even though there was every chance that it wasn't the technique used, he'd read enough of it to know that the thing being sealed was not simply transformed somehow into whatever was being used to hold it but was actually imprisoned within it and in the event of a living being serving as the container, their very life force would bolster the seal's strength to make it even more difficult for the sealed entity to escape.

Now that he thought about it, the same was true for regular storage seals that allowed shinobi to seal weapons and other items into scrolls. The scrolls were scrolls, regardless of what was placed inside them, so presumably the same held true in this case. Still, if there really was a malevolent being of raw destruction power imprisoned inside his body, then there should be a seal of some kind keeping it there. He'd never noticed any seals on his body before, but then again he'd never really had any reason to go looking either. Right there and then, Naruto made a mental note to perform a very thorough examination of his own body once all of this was over to try and locate this seal, if it even existed.

Any further thoughts were cut off, however, as Mizuki appeared in front of him brandishing his other oversized shuriken. Without any preamble, the metal star was sent flying through the air, only to be avoided again by a simple replacement. Now hidden in the foliage, Naruto unzipped his jacket just enough to fish out the small silver whistle that hung around his neck on a thin chain. It was a small thing, barely long enough to comfortably fit in his hand, and had four finger holes so that it could produce different notes, not that he'd ever been able to tell. He raised the instrument to his mouth and blew a short tune on it that went unheard by all humans in the area. In response, a volley of dull brown, needle-like, spines flew through the air and struck the Chunin. Almost immediately, the white-haired man's body went limp as he collapsed to the ground in an unmoving heap, completely incapable of moving even a single muscle.

With his opponent dealt with, Naruto leapt down from his perch on a branch, making several shadow clones as he did so which then promptly proceeded to start brawling to create signs of a fight, and headed over to the downed Chunin. Pulling out a small scroll from a pocket inside his jacket, he unsealed a syringe and a small vial of liquid, which was quickly emptied to fill the aforementioned syringe. He then jabbed it into the paralyzed man's neck and emptied the potent sedative into his bloodstream. Now confident that he would remain unconscious for a while now, Naruto resealed the syringe and empty vial into the scroll before releasing a much larger scroll from another storage seal.

This second scroll, which was slightly taller than the Scroll of Seals but was also a little thinner, was a simple dark green with a black band at either end and was the scroll created for reverse summoning things back to his home. After unrolling the scroll enough to reveal a very large and complex looking sealing array, the blond dragged the unconscious traitor onto the design, which was harder than he thought it would be, and activated it, causing the man to disappear with a faint pop and a small cloud of smoke. With that done, he quickly rolled up and resealed his reverse summoning scroll, returned his storage scroll back to its normal pocket, hoisted the Forbidden Scroll onto his shoulder and retraced his steps to get back to Iruka, but not before making a single shadow clone that leapt off towards the village whilst being followed by the faint rustling of bushes and quiet growling after silently blowing on its own whistle a couple of times.

When he got back to the clearing, Naruto saw that Iruka was unconscious and surrounded by a squad of ANBU, one of whom was providing basic treatment for the injured Chunin. As soon as the masked elite ninja saw him, which was before he had even set foot in the clearing, they disappeared in a burst of speed only to reappear around him with their swords drawn and aimed at his vital points, except for the one who stayed where he was to work on Iruka and make sure that the injured man could be transported without aggravating his wounds.

"Naruto Uzumaki, you will return to Konoha with us peacefully or we will kill you. Do you understand?" a cat-masked woman with long purple hair, presumably the leader of the squad, said, which caused Naruto to simply nod in response. "Whilst Iruka did inform us that you were simply following the instructions of your other teacher before he lost consciousness, we still have to consider you a traitor and act accordingly until the Hokage tells us otherwise," she continued, her voice taking on a kinder tone as she basically told him that she didn't want to keep him at sword point but had to do so anyway due to protocol.

"Yeah, I understand," Naruto responded, having already figured that something like this would happen. He was just happy that the ANBU hadn't simply run him through with their blades and retrieved the scroll from his corpse.

He handed over the giant scroll to the masked kunoichi, who proceeded to sling it over her own shoulder as he had discovered that the cumbersome object was impossible to seal into another smaller scroll for easier carrying and guessed that the ANBU was already aware of that fact or simply couldn't be bothered to try. With the scroll safely in their custody and Iruka currently resting on a stretcher that Naruto was sure hadn't been there before, the squad made their way through the forest back towards Konoha with several of them surrounding the blond and their blades too close to him for comfort.

* * *

><p>Barely ten minutes later and Naruto found himself standing in the Hokage's office. He had been a little surprised by sight of several small craters dotted around the village but figured that they were the results of the explosives Iruka had mentioned that had presumably been used as a diversionary tactic to allow Mizuki to escape undetected. The ANBU were still present, though they had given him a bit more space once the group was inside the room as it would be considerably harder for him to flee from a closed room than it would have been whilst they were out in the open. The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, had checked over the Forbidden Scroll as soon as they had entered and was relieved to find that it was indeed the genuine article since he had been too busy dealing with the situation at hand and organising his shinobi to actually check in on the scroll with his Telescope Technique.<p>

The elderly shinobi then proceeded to ask the blond to recount his version of events, which he did except he obviously hadn't mentioned abducting the unconscious traitor or how exactly he had beaten him, instead spinning a brief story of overwhelming him with countless shadow clones, before the ANBU squad leader informed him of what little Iruka had been able to tell them before passing out. The scarred Chunin hadn't been able to say much, just that Naruto had told him that he had taken the scroll on the orders of Mizuki who had then appeared and pretty much confirmed everything. Apparently, he had passed out before he could mention Mizuki revealing the secret of the Nine-Tails as that particular event had never been brought up.

"To be honest, there have been some suspicions about Mizuki for a while now. It's part of the reason he was assigned to the Academy in the first place as it would keep him in the village without hinting that anything was wrong; this incident just confirms things," Sarutobi stated. "Besides, an academy student would have had no way of knowing about the scroll's existence if they hadn't been informed about it by someone else, let alone where it was kept and details on its security. In light of this, you won't be punished for your actions, since you were simply following the orders of a superior officer exactly like you have been taught to do, and instead this incident will be marked as a B-ranked mission on your file and you will paid accordingly for confirming the existence of a traitor. This incident will be classified, though, so please don't go around telling everyone about it," he finished, smiling at the teen's stunned expression. Not that it was surprising; after all, how many shinobi complete such high-ranked missions before they even get assigned to a team?

"On that topic, have there been any sightings of Mizuki?" Sarutobi asked, directing his attention to the purple-haired ANBU kunoichi, who was the only squad member left in sight as the others had seamlessly melted into the shadows at some point when Naruto wasn't looking.

"Apart from the clearing where Iruka was found and Naruto later entered, the only other sign is a little deeper in the forest where there are indications of a minor skirmish having taken place recently. This matches up with Naruto's story of a brief encounter with Mizuki as there are indications of a large group fighting that disappear without a trace, exactly what would be expected from the usage of shadow clones," she explained. "There are several teams combing the forest as we speak but it looks like he covered his tracks quite well as we can't find much evidence of him past that skirmish."

"I see, have the teams report in the moment they find anything that could lead to Mizuki. If he could get a hold of the security information for the scroll, there's no telling what else he knows," the Hokage ordered, turning his attention to the blond who was still sat opposite him with a troubled expression on his face. The kunoichi saluted in acknowledgement before disappearing to carry out her orders.

"You seem troubled, Naruto. I take it that it's about what Mizuki said about the Nine-Tails?" the old man asked, simply getting a nod in response. He sighed to himself as he tried to work out what to say before deciding to just be honest. The boy would probably encounter the beast sooner or later anyway so he really should know about it and if Sarutobi lied and said that Mizuki had made it all up then Naruto would undoubtedly not trust him anymore when he did meet it.

"Mizuki was speaking the truth when he said that the Nine-Tails wasn't killed and instead was sealed inside a newborn. He was also correct when he said that that newborn was you but you are most definitely not the Nine-Tails itself. I trust that you've been shown how scrolls can be used to seal various pieces of equipment for easier carrying? This is essentially the same principle but instead of a scroll, we have you and instead of equipment, we have the Nine-Tailed Fox. The scroll is not the equipment that was sealed and you are not the Fox, just the container that keeps it imprisoned," Sarutobi explained, unknowingly using the exact same train of thought that the blond had back in the forest.

"Why was I never told? I think that I deserve to know if I have something like that sealed inside of me," Naruto asked.

"You were never told because I wanted you to have some semblance of a normal life. Whilst it's true that most of the adults in the village are already aware due to them being around during the attack, no-one else knows due to a law I passed that explicitly forbad anyone from telling someone not already in the know. This law is punishable by death and, as I'm sure you can imagine, nobody has broken this law after the first few who did were executed. The only ones capable of revealing this secret without punishment are myself, as the current Hokage, and you, as the person the law was made to protect," the old man said. "Is there anything else you would like to ask?"

"Why me? Why did he seal the Fox inside me?" the blond asked, wondering if he had been picked for some specific reason or if it was just bad luck on his part.

"The Nine-Tails could only be sealed into a newborn child, as its power would destroy the person if anyone older was used, and you were the only person born that day. It was the Fourth Hokage's wish that you be seen as a hero for your sacrifice, even though that sacrifice was something that was forced upon you," the Hokage replied, though Naruto had the feeling that he was leaving something important out. "You should go and get some sleep; it's been a long night. If you ever want to talk, you can come and see me if you want."

"Yeah, alright," the blond got to his feet and made his way over to the door, though it was obvious to anyone that he was struggling to decide how he should feel about the recent revelation. After leaving the Hokage's office, he made his way towards one of his home's many entrances, specifically the one closest to his old apartment, discreetly checking that he wasn't being followed again and again the entire way there. Once he was confident that he wasn't being shadowed, Naruto walked straight past the building that held his former residence, after creating a shadow clone to stay there for the night in case anyone came looking for him, and ducked into a narrow alley that was just around the corner.

Despite looking empty with absolutely nothing of note at all, Naruto headed right to the end of the alleyway and knelt next to a small discoloured rock that was embedded in the ground off to one side right next to a building. He sent a small sliver of chakra into the stone, which was in fact a trigger for one of his home's secret entrances, all of which had been modified slightly since he had found them to only accept his chakra, and was rewarded by a small section of the wall at the end of the alley opening just enough for a grown adult to fit through. The blond slipped through the disguised door, which swung closed mere moments later, and headed down the inclined tunnel into the larger corridor-like secondary base that he used mainly to house all of his creations. He walked right past each and every door and instead walked along another tunnel that led to the main area where he actually lived.

Knowing that his clone had taken care of anything that needed doing after arriving earlier with his pets, the mentally-exhausted boy headed straight to his bedroom where Koneko was already curled up on the bed. The sound of the door shutting proved to be enough to wake her up, assuming that she had actually been asleep in the first place, and she immediately jumped to the floor and wrapped him up in a tight hug, happy that he was back, though she was looking at him in some confusion, probably perplexed by witnessing his clone dispelling earlier. After managing to extract himself from the cuddle, he quickly ditched his coat, gloves, scarf and boots and climbed into bed, quickly joined by the tired catgirl. Within minutes, Naruto was fast asleep, his dreams full of gigantic nine-tailed foxes.

* * *

><p>The following morning, when he eventually awoke, Naruto just laid there for a while as his mind thought about the discovery that he had what was arguably the most powerful being in existence locked up inside of him. He honestly wasn't sure what to think about that. If he could somehow access that power then he'd be virtually unbeatable but, on the other hand, there was always a chance that the Nine-Tails could try and do something if he ever did. He was even more worried when he remembered something he had read a while ago; which was that seals get weaker as time goes by and either have to be fixed up or replaced or they would simply stop working. From what he could work out, that was the main reason he had been able to gain access to his new home in the first place, as the seals that opened and closed the entrances had weakened to the point that anybody's chakra would activate them even though he wasn't the person the seals had been made to work for.<p>

Deciding that he needed more information, Naruto roused Koneko with a quick poke in the side, which only got him a couple of thin scratches that healed in no time, and worked his way through his standard morning activities of showering, where he took the opportunity to look over his body to try and find the seal that holds the Nine-Tails at bay which he eventually found on his stomach after he had started moulding chakra to make a shadow clone to examine the areas he couldn't see well enough, changing his clothes and sorting out breakfast. Once all of that was done and he had fed the other chimeras, the blond made a quick stop in the 'experimentation room', which also doubled as a drug lab nowadays, to pick up a few things and headed over to one of the doors at the end of the corridor that was his secondary base, with Koneko following right behind him.

That particular room was located right next to the reverse summoning room and had been designed to house human prisoners. The main reason he had set up such a room in the first place was because he still wasn't sure exactly how long it would take for him to get proficient enough with the Chimera Technique to assimilate a Kekkei Genkai and thus it was entirely possible that he came across an interesting bloodline-wielding shinobi before he was capable of absorbing them. It hadn't even been all that difficult to set the room up. At first, he was considering just keeping any prisoners unconscious since it would undoubtedly make things much easier for him but had had the realisation that, if he could develop some interrogation skills, he could get them to spill what they knew before he assimilated their abilities; it would certainly help him out with regards to how to actually use said abilities.

In the end, Naruto had decided on a compromise. He had one room set up to house multiple unconscious people; it wasn't much, just a few futons on the ground to avoid problems such as bedsores that could occur after resting on a hard surface for a while and some stands for IVs to provide a constant inflow of sedatives and nutrients. The room he was standing in front of, however, was intended to contain conscious prisoners and, since he really didn't know enough about motion-restrictive seals to use them, he had instead affixed several chains to the walls, each with heavy manacles, to restrain people. He didn't even have to come up with some way to prevent the captives from using their chakra to try and escape since, amongst all of the various bits and bobs he had found scattered about the place, Hiruko had somehow acquired what was at that point an experimental collar developed by Konoha's Torture and Interrogation division.

The collar's function was simple enough as it constantly drained the wearer's chakra to the degree that they didn't have enough to perform even the simplest of chakra manipulation exercises, let alone any actual ninjutsu, and also had the added side-effect of inducing extreme fatigue as well; though Naruto had since tweaked it slightly so that it also functioned as a sort of shock-collar, but that particular feature hadn't been properly tested yet. This meant that someone wearing it would not be able to use their chakra at all and would be too weakened physically to be much of a problem. Despite these benefits, the collar had apparently not been utilised by the Torture and Interrogation division once they had discovered that prolonged use of it on a single individual could cause permanent, and fairly serious, damage to whoever wore it. The blond had briefly considered trying to fix the collar to remove that potential downside but that had ended up being quite low on his to-do list, so low that it was unlikely to get down anytime in the near future.

Or rather, that was the case before the previous evening when he had discovered the Shadow Clone Technique. He would have to do a few tests with it to make sure that it functioned like he thought it did but, with any luck, he could use it to speed things up as it should allow him to effectively do multiple things at once. Of course, Naruto seriously doubted that clones could perform the Chimera Technique on themselves since they presumably lacked actual flesh and blood bodies, and even if they could, those changes wouldn't transfer back over to him, but he could use them to try and fix the collar like he had wanted and possibly speed up his learning of the biological functions of the various different animals in existence if the mental feedback comment held true. Plus, the doppelgangers would in theory be capable of using the Chimera Technique on others as long as they had the chakra for it but, since the technique wasn't something that could be used on the fly due to the time and concentration it required, he couldn't think of a situation at the moment where that would actually be useful. Still, those were thoughts for another time as the young Uzumaki had other things to do that day.

Opening the door, Naruto entered the room, quickly followed by Koneko as she didn't have anything else to do and so stuck with him, and made his way over to the sole other person present, his former teacher Mizuki Baikokudo. The unconscious white-haired Chunin was currently sat on the ground with his back to the wall. His arms were held out on either side by the sturdy manacles around his wrists that kept him in place and there was a simple black collar fastened around his neck with several glowing symbols decorating its length. Since Koneko and the shadow clone from the previous evening had sorted through the traitor's belongings for anything even remotely interesting, though that had mainly been the clone as the catgirl had simply been tasked with emptying everything out gently to avoid causing damage, Mizuki was currently only wearing his underwear and a simple white vest that he had had on under his uniform since everything else had been removed during the search and he simply didn't care enough to replace them.

Naruto then created a shadow clone to take notes on the interrogation that was about to happen, even though he was planning to use his voice recorder as well; only what was said would be recorded and the clone was mainly there to document everything else. After the double had received a notebook and pencil from the original and had settled down on the other side of the room, the blond pulled out a vial of liquid and injected it into the Chunin's arm, which would effectively neutralise the sedatives in his bloodstream and cause him to wake up much earlier than he would if Naruto had simply waited for the drugs to wear off.

Less than five minutes later, the white-haired traitor groaned as he slowly regained consciousness before pulling against the chains bound him to the wall once he noticed that his hands were shackled. Realising that he couldn't simply pull himself free, Mizuki instead glanced around the room in confusion, since it didn't resemble what he had imagined the Torture and Interrogation division would be like, until his eyes rested on Naruto and Koneko, the latter being stood behind and slightly to the side of her master.

"What the hell are you doing here, bastard Fox?" he screamed, clearly unhappy at seeing Naruto again. "I don't know why they brought you or your demon whore here, I'm not saying anything," he continued, revelling in the sad expression that the feline brunette developed; even if she didn't necessarily understand what he had called her, the tone he had used had been enough.

Despite the brave front, the blond could tell that he wasn't as confident as he was making himself out to be. Based on his words, Mizuki presumably believed that he had been taken to the Torture and Interrogation department since he had been knocked out so close to the village, which is probably what would have happened had Naruto not taken him instead.

"Nobody brought me here, Mizuki-sensei," the blond stated, saying the title in the most patronising tone he could muster. "This is my home and I brought you here to carry on our little discussion from the forest." That wasn't strictly true, since he'd kidnapped the man mainly because it would give him a test subject with a fully developed active chakra system, but he might as well question him to see if he could get anything useful. "Also, despite her former profession, I would prefer that you didn't talk to Koneko in such a manner or call her such things." This statement was punctuated with a single kick to the traitor's shin as he started stroking the catgirl behind her ear, causing her to start purring as she nuzzled against his hand.

"A freak's a freak. She-" Mizuki started, only to suddenly cry out in pain as Naruto made a single hand sign to activate the shock-collar, which had the amusing side effect of causing the Chunin's body to start twitching due to the electricity currently flowing through him.

"I told you not to talk like that," Naruto said as he released the hand sign and made another. A perfect copy of the blond appeared in a puff of smoke and led Koneko out of the room, having been made with the instruction to try and cheer her up. Once the door shut, the Genin turned his attention back to his prisoner, who seemed happy at upsetting the brunette as much as he had. Seeing that, he briefly reactivated the shock-collar function for a few moments, silently enjoying the pain that Mizuki was experiencing since the man deserved it for trying to trick and then kill him.

"As you can probably guess, I could do this all day but I'd rather carry on our talk about the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox," the teen said after releasing his hand sign again in an attempt to get back on topic. "I want you to tell me everything you know about the Fox."

"Why should I tell you anything?" Mizuki asked, deciding to be stubborn since he doubted that the blond could make him talk. The only reason he'd mentioned it in the first place in the forest was because he was expecting the knowledge to cause some kind of break down and make the damned beast easier to kill.

"I could just keep electrocuting you if you don't cooperate. Failing that, there are a number of things I could do to cause you an immense amount of pain but all of that could be avoided if simply told me what I want to know," Naruto responded calmly, though he was thinking that perhaps he should have read up on interrogation techniques before starting this since he was more or less going in blind.

Seeing that the man wasn't going to play ball and didn't seem fazed by the threat of electrocution, the blond reached into his pocket and pulled out another small vial and injected a tiny amount into Mizuki's arm. Almost immediately, the Chunin started screaming in absolute agony, far louder than he had previously, before quietening down a few minutes later looking like hell. The reaction wasn't all that surprising given what exactly the liquid was but it was still jotted down by the clone sat with the notebook.

"I did say that I had ways of causing pain. That was a toxin developed from the venom of a very unusual species of shrew that lives around the outer edges of Training Ground 44. Whilst the venom itself isn't potent enough to kill a human, it's capable of causing a good deal of pain and this toxin was designed to maximise that. In miniscule quantities, the pain only lasts for a few minutes before it gets diluted enough in the bloodstream to become ineffective but larger quantities would last much longer," Naruto explained as he readied another, larger, dose of the toxin.

* * *

><p>A little less than half an hour later, Naruto exited the room, notebook in hand, thinking over everything he had managed to get out of Mizuki, who was currently sedated again. Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to get much since the Chunin apparently didn't know very much, either that or he was a damn good actor. He hadn't really learnt anything regarding the Nine-Tails that he didn't already know, since the story of the beast suddenly appearing on the outskirts of the village without any warning and destroying everything in sight was ridiculously well-known and what little Mizuki knew of the sealing had already been revealed by the Hokage.<p>

That wasn't to say that he had wasted his time, however, as he had succeeded in getting some information about the few techniques that the man knew. Unfortunately, the only remotely interesting ones were an earth-based one that allowed the user to travel through the ground and a simple illusion that made the target think that the ground was swallowing them up like quicksand, even then he only knew the absolute basics of the first and the second was easy enough for any decently-skilled shinobi to break out of.

Deciding to deal with Mizuki later, Naruto set off to try and find Koneko and his clone to see if she was feeling any better after the Chunin's words and harsh tone. Sure, she was fairly simple-minded and didn't necessarily understand that the man had been rudely insulting her but the hatred in his voice had been clear enough for anyone to comprehend. His clone hadn't dispelled yet, as he hadn't received the influx of memories that would have occurred if it had, but all that told him was that there wasn't anything going on that the duplicate couldn't handle.

By the time he had arrived back in the smaller main base, Naruto had still not seen hide nor hair of the catgirl or his clone and so he ducked into his lab to put away the things he had picked up from their earlier, namely the toxin he had used on Mizuki along with the needles required to deliver it and a couple of other similar things. The blond was just heading towards his living room to drop off his notebook when he heard a quiet thud coming from his bedroom that was soon followed up with a chuckle from his clone. Knowing that his clone's presence meant that Koneko was also in there, Naruto placed the notebook on a table that was right next to the door in his lab and walked into his bedroom to see if the catgirl was feeling any better, only to be greeted by a sight he honestly hadn't been expecting.

The brunette was kneeling on the floor at the side of his bed with her back to him, bent over forwards at the waist with the side of her head pressed against the ground so that she could see under the bed whilst her arm fumbled around under it. Studiously ignoring the completely unobstructed view he had of her furless lower half as well as the slight wiggling of her ass that accompanied her movements, the blond instead turned to the clone that was stood in the corner at the other side of the room, clearly finding something about Koneko's actions amusing, and dispelled it with a smack to the back of the head.

As the memories flowed through his mind, Naruto soon had his answers regarding both the brunette's current activity and what had amused his double so much. Apparently, the doppelganger had been struggling to come up with a way to cheer Koneko up and had, in a moment of inspiration, created a makeshift cat toy in the form of a small plastic container, one that was about as big as a human fist, with a couple of coins in it and tossed it onto the floor near the girl's feet. The rattling of the coins was what had initially caught her attention and, after coming to the realisation that it rattled whenever it moved, the catgirl was soon crouched down on all fours, batting the item around on the floor just like an actual cat would and chasing it whenever it rolled away.

The pair had ended up in the bedroom for the sole reason that it was more or less the only room in the place that had a clear floor and lacked things that could break if the brunette got a little too excited with her new toy. The reason for her current, potentially provocative, position was simply because, just before he had entered the room, she had knocked the rattling container far enough under the bed that she was having trouble reaching it due to the bed being low enough that she could only just get her arm under it, with the thud he had heard being caused by her slamming into the bed frame in a failed attempt to stop the object before it could disappear.

The blond created another clone and, as said duplicate made its way over to the foot of the bed, tapped the wriggling woman on her shoulder to get her attention. Whilst succeeding in getting Koneko to look at him over her shoulder, the action caused her to lose her balance slightly and roll onto her back, her arm still stretched under the bed as she tried to use her new position to improve her reach. Since it was becoming apparent that she wasn't going to move until she reclaimed her toy, Naruto carefully stepped over her head and onto the wall, adhering himself there with chakra, and slowly lifted the upper end of the bed up as his clone did the same with the lower end. As soon as the bed was high enough, Koneko slid further under it until she managed to grab her rattling plaything and quickly brought it out, not wanting it to be trapped out of her reach anymore. Once she was clear, the pair of identical blonds lowered the bed back onto the floor and the clone dispersed in a cloud of white smoke whilst the original sat down on the bed to watch the catgirl bat the improvised toy around with a smile on her face and made a mental note to pick up some actual cat toys at some point since it seemed like a good way to cheer her up.

After a while of simply watching Koneko enjoying herself, along with repeatedly stopping the impromptu toy from rolling back under the bed, a grumbling noise filled the room as Naruto's stomach signalled that it was time to eat. The noise also caught Koneko's attention as she had immediately turned to face him, knowing that such a thing indicated food would appear soon, and promptly forgot about her plaything in favour of the thought of eating more delicious fish. The pair then made their way to the kitchen to get lunch, after which they also went around feeding the various other residents bar Mizuki since the blond didn't feel like wasting food on him considering his usefulness probably wouldn't last more than another few days; he only planned to use the Chunin as a guinea pig for some of his more shinobi-oriented chemical creations and his new genjutsu, as well as see if there was any more information he could get out of him, before trying to see if he could fuse the man with some random animal to see if he could do it without destroying his chakra system, which was something he had not yet managed but had to get right before he even contemplated using Chimera Technique on himself.

Once all of the different chimeras were fed, Naruto and Koneko returned to his laboratory where the blond soon got to work trying to reduce the lethality of the toxin he had used on Mizuki earlier, as the amount he had given him had started to kill him before the blond intervened to save him, whilst still retaining its pain-inducing capabilities as it would be useless without them. Before he got started with this, Naruto made a pair of clones that went back into his bedroom, since it had a decent amount of open space, to practice the illusion he had gotten from his prisoner, one to cast the technique and the other to serve as the target. He didn't bother sending more than two clones for that both because doing so would significantly reduce the amount of chakra each duplicate had available but also because he didn't think he'd benefit from doing so since all of his clones were identical copies of him and would thus each end up doing exactly the same thing, which in principle would include reaching the same breakthroughs at more or less the same time, which would render large numbers pointless due to the repetition except for things like building muscle memory where repetition was the whole point. Koneko ended up going with them, since there was nothing much for her to do in the lab, and an afterthought led to Naruto sending a third clone after her in case she started playing with the rattling plastic container again to stop her from sending out of reach.

The rest of the day was rather uneventful as Koneko ended up spending most of the afternoon having a nap on the Genin's bed whilst the clones practiced the quicksand-like illusion until they exhausted their chakra and popped, though there hadn't been much success owing partly to Naruto's ridiculously huge reserves not lending themselves particularly well to the precision art of genjutsu and partly to the fact that illusions were not something he had used before except for the simple Transformation Technique taught to all academy students. Naruto himself thought that he had made some progress with regards to making his pain-inducing toxin non-lethal but he wouldn't know for certain until it was tested, preferably on humans as interrogation was the main reason he had developed it in the first place.

Once everything was put away for the night and Naruto had sorted out tea for both himself and Koneko, the blond decided to give some of his chimeras a bit of exercise before turning in for the night, something that wasn't done as much as they would have liked but the young Uzumaki didn't want to let them out too often as it would increase the likelihood of being caught since they had to go outside due to the lack of open space inside. Making sure that he had his whistle on him so he could discreetly send out commands, as well as sending Koneko back to his bedroom since these particular creatures had something of an unhealthy interest in her, he sent a clone to open up the exit that led to the forest outside the village whilst he himself opened the door of the large room where they lived.

"Alright, time for a run but don't wander off!" Naruto called out, causing the pack inside to bolt out of the room and down the tunnel that would take them outside, not even needing to stop at all to get their bearings as they were quite used to using that specific tunnel. Naruto quickly followed after them and arrived at the exit only a couple of minutes later, dispelling the clone when he did as keeping it around would serve no further purpose. He couldn't see the beasts all that well due to the low light, which wasn't much of a problem for them as they were perfectly capable of relying on their particularly strong sense of smell and as well as their infrared-sensitivity, but the sounds they made as they ran through the undergrowth as well as the growls and hisses that they used to communicate with each other were enough for him to get a vague idea as to their locations, especially since they hadn't been instructed to keep quiet.

Half an hour later, a silent whistle blow caused the group to congregate back at the opening of the tunnel ready to go back inside. Watching how quickly they gathered caused Naruto to smile slightly to himself at how well-trained they were, which wasn't much of a surprise since he had spent the majority of the last year training them after he had made them, with some of this training being the source of the rumours that resulted in the village's Red Light District being fairly empty most nights, which only made acquiring new test subjects easier for him. A quick head count confirmed that all of the partially-scaled beasts were present and another whistle blow sent them back into the tunnel where another clone was waiting to close the door of their room again once they were all in.

Once that was done and all of the doors that needed shutting had been shut, it was getting quite late and so Naruto made his way to his bedroom where Koneko was sprawled out on his bed. It took a few tries to get the sleeping catgirl to move enough for him to get under the covers but he managed it eventually and, after the slumbering brunette wrapped him in a hug as soon as she realised he was there, was soon asleep.

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><p>The rest of the week passed in much the same way. Along with picking up some cat toys for Koneko, Naruto tested various different drugs on Mizuki, administering counteragents as and when required to stop anything from killing him, and tended to spend a fair bit of the afternoons trying to alter the drugs that didn't work as desired. He had also tried interrogating the Chunin again on a couple of occasions but failed to learn anything new of note, something that he believed was simply due to the man not knowing anything else of interest. His clones were slowly getting the hang of the illusion he had picked up, as well as getting some practice dispelling genjutsu, but it was still far too weak to be of any real use other than as a momentary distraction.<p>

It was interesting to note here that the blond had tried to use the illusion on Mizuki once but it had completely failed to take hold, which Naruto put down to the chakra-draining collar leeching the chakra required to actualise the genjutsu before it could actually do anything. It wasn't all that important but it did mean that, unless he devised another way to lock down the chakra of prisoners, he would never be able to use genjutsu to interrogate, which was a shame since it was generally a pretty good method of doing it as resistance to mental torture was harder to develop than resistance to physical torture.

Naruto had also considered practising the subterranean movement technique he had gotten but he hadn't wanted to risk it damaging the walls of his home, which he felt was a possibility since the technique worked by altering the earth to flow around the user's body, and he also didn't want to practise it outside since it would be all too easy for someone to catch him doing it, which would lead to questions that he were certainly prefer not answering.

It was currently Sunday, the day before the Genin team assignments, and Naruto was sat in his living room going over notes on both human anatomy, paying special attention to information concerning the chakra circulatory system, and rat anatomy, since it was incredibly easy for him to get one as there were always some lurking around his home. His plan for the day was simple enough; he was going to use the Chimera Technique to fuse Mizuki with a rat with the overall goal being doing so without damaging the traitor's chakra network. Depending on how well he did, he would be closer to getting to the point of confidently using the technique on himself without running the risk of crippling his body.

Once he was sure he had all of the information committed to memory, which didn't actually take as long he made it out to since he tended to go over things again and again countless times just to be sure despite being able to recite the vast majority of it in his sleep if needed, Naruto returned his notes back to where they belonged and headed over to Mizuki's prison, stopping off in his lab to collect the anaesthetised rat he had caught earlier that morning as well as a sedative to knock the Chunin out with and his notebook and voice recorder to record everything that went on. Upon opening the door to the cell, it was obvious that the white-haired man had seen better days. The lack of actual food over the last week, since Naruto really didn't want to waste it on someone that wouldn't be around for much longer once he outlived his usefulness, coupled with the various different drugs he had been subjected to, which ranged from simple paralytics and sedatives up to the pain-inducing toxin used earlier and an experimental regenerative serum synthesised from Naruto's own blood that had been created in an attempt to pass on his abnormal healing capabilities to his creations, had left Mizuki slightly emaciated and somewhat pitiful to look at.

The traitor didn't even acknowledge Naruto's presence in the room, even as the Genin jabbed another needle into his arm, and he was unconscious in mere seconds. After double-checking that he was indeed out cold, the blond removed both the heavy shackles around his wrists and the collar around his neck and dragged him towards the middle of the room with the aid of a couple of clones; he didn't want to bother hauling the man over to his laboratory when the room he was in would do just as well.

One of the clones picked up the notebook and settled down next to the door whilst the other took the voice recorder and stood ready near the original. Naruto himself knelt down on the floor next to Mizuki and, after cutting away what few remaining clothes the man had on so that they didn't interfere, placed the sleeping rat on his torso whilst giving the clone with the recorder a brief nod. The double immediately started the recorder and the original informed the device of the current date.

"The test subjects are a male shinobi somewhere around the mid-twenties, more specifically the Konoha Chunin Mizuki Baikokudo, and a male rat around six months old. The rat seems to be in good health but the shinobi is slightly emaciated after being subjected to various different drugs over the last week as well as a lack of proper food," the original Naruto spoke, starting with the same type of exposition he always did. "Fortunately, the condition of the shinobi shouldn't be much of a problem since the primary objective of this experiment is simply to try and perform a merger without destroying the chakra system, which has not been done successfully to date, and thus the subject's continued survival is not important."

With the basic information given, Naruto ran through the hand seals required to activate the Chimera Technique and placed his hands on Mizuki's torso either side of the rat. The jelly-like blue slime immediately emerged from his palms and rapidly spread out to cover both the Chunin and the rodent. Seeing that, Naruto closed his eyes to help him focus on the structure of the human chakra network, though a small part of his concentration also went to ensuring the merger occurred properly.

Unlike the other times he had used the technique, the liquid seemed to be encountering some resistance with regards to breaking down the bodies so the blond had to increase his focus even more to overcome it. He idly noted this resistance was similar, yet much stronger and thus requiring greater concentration, to the resistance he had encountered when experimenting with a weasel from Training Ground 44 that had caught his attention purely because it possessed an incredibly basic chakra system itself. He was so focused that he missed the goo slowly crawl up onto his hands until the clone behind him roughly shook his shoulder to get his attention. Immediately, the blond's eyes snapped open and he pulled his hands free only to see that they were badly deformed and covered in a thin layer of grey fur, matching that of the rat perfectly. Understandably, this sight caused Naruto to panic even as more of the blue liquid formed on his palms and started to engulf his hands once again.

It was due to his current state that Naruto's body responded to the perceived threat by generating large amounts of chakra and sending it all down towards his hands. When nothing changed, and Naruto's panic increased to even greater levels, a second, much larger, pulse of chakra was released, this time accompanied by a slight burning sensation in his stomach. Unlike the last time, the desperate reflex was accompanied by a dull orange glow as his hands felt like they had been set on fire and the blond screamed in pure agony. The blue liquid evaporated from the heat, taking with it small bits of flesh and revealing his hands once again. This time, there was no layer of grey fur, indeed there was little in the way of skin let alone any hairs, as the hands were more or less skeletal in appearance with thin layers of exposed flesh covering most of it, though there were some places that he could actually see the bone, and tiny patches of even thinner skin. All in all, it looked like most of the flesh had been melted off with some kind of acid or something, leaving just the bones and small remnants.

Unfortunately, the gruesome sight, especially considering that it was his own body, only served to make him panic even further until he noticed that the muscles, tendons and skin were slowly regenerating in much the same manner as all of the other times he had been injured, though the speed was noticeably reduced. It was only at this point that Naruto noticed the clone crouching next to the gelatinous mass on the floor with its hands on the surface. Taking into account the voice recorder on the floor next to him, he soon reached the conclusion that the doppelganger in charge of operating the device had taken over the merger of Mizuki and rat once he himself had been distracted by whatever the hell had caused the technique to go after him like it had. If nothing else, he had to admire their dedication to the cause, even if it was his own cause in the first place.

The clone soon popped, filling Naruto's mind with memories of a similar but slightly less painful experience to his own, only to be quickly replaced by another made by the note taker, who was currently scribbling down everything that went on in the notebook. That second clone succeeded in completing the fusion as it didn't disappear until the goo of the Chimera Technique had been fully retracted to reveal the ugliest rat Naruto had ever seen. The rodent was slightly smaller than Mizuki had been and was nowhere near as human-looking as Koneko was, being little more than a large rat with a basic body structure that only vaguely resembled a human's.

Since he was incapable of doing anything until his hands healed themselves, which would probably take several hours given the extent of the damage, the clone with the notebook made another duplicate that walked over to examine the unconscious rodent. The creature was alive, though how long it could remain that way was a completely different story, but, more importantly, it had a properly-developed chakra system throughout its entire body, meaning that the experiment could be considered a success despite raising more than a few questions that would need looking into.

Naruto's current theory was that Mizuki's active and frequently-used chakra system was what had caused the resistance since it hadn't happened with any other experiments bar the weasel and all that was different this time was Mizuki's chakra usage as every other person he had experimented with had been a civilian. This addition of a functional chakra system may also be the reason being the Chimera Technique turning on him like it had, but he thought it was more likely that it was due to the lack of concentration caused by compensating for the resistance since the chakra system itself shouldn't be capable of causing such a phenomenon and there had been absolutely no indication of such a thing occurring with the weasel.

The other main point was that, somehow, he had managed to forcefully stop the merger from occurring on his hands and even reverse the changes, though it had severely damaged him in the process and it was only his abnormal healing that stopped him from being permanently crippled. From what he could remember, all he had done was flood the affected limbs with chakra in a desperate attempt to save them, though the second wave of energy had been accompanied by the burning sensation in his stomach, exactly where the seal holding the Nine-Tails back was located. Perhaps the Fox's incredibly potent chakra was what had been able to purge the assimilated flesh from his body? If that was the case, and he could gain some semblance of control over it, it might be possible for him to remove acquired traits from his body if he ever found something better or fundamentally incompatible with whatever he had already grafted onto himself, something that should be virtually impossible due to how intricately interwoven the assimilated cells are in relation to those of the host body.

Still, that was something that would require some looking into, so Naruto instead decided to focus on the mutated rat creature in front of him. Whilst it was certainly a successful experiment due to retaining the chakra system, there was no real need to keep it around anymore so, after issuing a quick instruction to the clone, the rat thing was pumped full of enough venom to kill a dozen grown men, the large quantity being due to not knowing exactly how susceptible the rodent was to the stuff, and died. Once the kill was confirmed, the body was dragged out of the room and into another several doors down, where it was promptly devoured by the hungry residents who didn't have to worry about the toxin flowing through their food since it came from them in the first place and they were therefore immune to it.

With that taken care of, Naruto followed the clone back to his living room, since the doppelganger was required to open all of the doors for him, much to its slight annoyance. Once there, he listened to the recording made during the experiment and then read through the notes taken. This information, coupled with his own memories of the experience and the notes concerning the weasel from several months ago, all but confirmed Naruto's suspicions that the unexpected events were primarily down to a lack of concentration on his part caused by compensating for the resistance that Mizuki's chakra system caused.

With that conclusion reached, Naruto turned his attention back to how he had managed to purge the rat cells from his hands, which had been confirmed by the clone's diagnostic technique. The observations confirmed the faint orange glow that he had seen; which all but proved the usage of the Nine-Tails' chakra, not matter how minor it may have been. Since it would take months, if not years, of training to be able to effectively channel the inhuman energy through another being, not to mention that it was more or less due to his own healing ability that he would ultimately come out of the experience uninjured, the only feasible way of testing the hypothesis at the moment would be to try it on himself, though he would have to actually fuse something to his body first otherwise there would be nothing to purge in the first place.

This was something that he was a bit apprehensive about but, as the blond thought about it, almost every issue that could arise with using the Chimera Technique on himself had already been dealt with at some point. He was more than competent performing the actual fusions and getting everything to connect properly and his inability of performing mergers without damaging the chakra network had been overcome with this experiment. The only real thing that he hadn't achieved yet was creating chimeras that retained full human sentience and that shouldn't be a problem so long as he kept the fusion far away from his head and, by extension, his brain.

Yes, now that he was properly thinking about it, simply grafting a trait to his body should be simple enough to do but that raised the question of what exactly he should add. Preferably, it should be something relatively simple to deal with but he also didn't want to assimilate something useless which reduced his options by quite a few. As he ran through a mental list of various different animal capabilities, Naruto recalled that he had, in fact, grafted a trait from one creature onto the body of another, or rather he had combined two separate traits and then infused them onto the body of a third animal as the original chimera's body simply hadn't been capable of effectively supporting the intriguing ability he had synthesised.

Weighing up the various pros and cons of giving himself that specific capability, the Uzumaki had to admit that it would be a good test-run of the Chimera Technique on his own body. The ability itself was simple enough to create since it involved isolating distinct parts of the two donor animals and combining them together; it would certainly be a useful power to have as well, especially for capturing future test subjects; and he was already familiar with creating it since he had persevered through several failed attempts to eventually succeed on his fifth try. The main downside would be that the animals required lived inside Training Ground 44, which was home to many of the more intriguing animal species he had come across, and one of them resided fairly deep inside the forest.

As Koneko wandered into the room and got comfy on him, having missed not seeing him for the last few hours, Naruto made up his mind and started planning on when he would venture back into the dangerous training ground to collect the test subjects, or rather he dictated to the unhappy clone who, in turn, wrote everything down since his hands were not yet healed enough for writing and were instead quite painful. It was only due his pain tolerance, something that had always been higher than normal, that he wasn't constantly screaming in agony as it healed. Since he had his Genin team assignment the next day, which would be followed by the Jonin teacher's personal test that he had accidentally found out about the previous year, the boy decided to postpone this particular experiment until after all of that was done, though it was likely that he would have to wait a few days regardless as it would probably take that long to track down and capture the required animals.

That was how the rest of the day went, Naruto dictating his plan to his duplicate whilst Koneko snuggled up against him on his lap, slightly put out that he was currently incapable of stroking her like she wanted and the clone simply lacked the chakra to make another just for that purpose. By the time his hands had completely healed, the clone had long since dispersed due to running out of chakra and the original Naruto decided to simply turn in for the night, which was a little difficult due to the sleeping catgirl huddled up against him, as he had to get up fairly early the following day to get to the Academy on time.

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><p><strong>AN: Sorry about the delay on this chapter (I wanted to try and get this out a couple of weeks ago) but it fought with me every step of the way and by the time I realised that it was getting long enough to split into two smaller chapters, each of a decent length, I was almost done anyway. The whole Mizuki incident/Nine-Tail's reveal turned out to be harder to write than I thought it would be, especially with regards to Naruto's reaction. Hopefully everybody's happy with how I portrayed it, but I just couldn't do the standard freak-out since Naruto is noticeably calmer and analytical in this than in Canon plus he already had suspicions that there was something special about him as well as a basic knowledge of what sealing actually entails.**

**However, the main reason for the delay was that I hit something of a brick wall regarding what exactly to do with Mizuki and I ended up rewriting some of the chapter several times before ending up with what's been posted. Hopefully, the next chapter (which includes the team assignments and the genin test) won't take quite as long to get done, but I'm not going to promise anything since my luck is bad enough that, if I did, something awful would happen to stop me from writing, like getting hit by a car or my computer exploding.**

**Also, for anyone who's interested but hasn't heard yet, the Naruto Manga is apparently coming to an end next month, though considering the current events, I'm not entirely sure if everything'll get wrapped up properly or not.**


	4. Team Life and the Monkey Swarm

**IMPORTANT: This chapter contains some minor sexual references, so I'm warning you all here. I said in the first chapter that this story was rated M for a reason and I merely adding to that a little here.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, it belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.**

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><p><span><strong>Chapter 4: Team Life and the Monkey Swarm<strong>

Since he had gone to bed early, or at least earlier than his usual time of one or two o'clock in the morning, Naruto wound up with enough time to get up, sort everything out and get to the academy before any of the other students, which had surprised him a little as he usually only arrived five or ten minutes before classes started, if that, due to all of the things he did before he left each morning. After he took his usual seat at the back of the room, the blond simply stretched out a little with his feet resting on the table as he thought over what he knew would happen to try and work out when he should visit Training Ground 44 to collect the animals he needed for his upcoming experiment.

Today would be the actual team assignments, that much was a given, and the additional test issued by the Jonin teachers would either be sometime in the afternoon or the following day, depending on the teacher in question. If the test was later on, then he could probably go on his little outing afterwards unless it dragged on for too long. On the other hand, if the test wasn't until the following day, then he could possibly collect the animals that afternoon and maybe even actually assimilate them before the test.

Unfortunately, he couldn't really plan his trip properly until he knew what else would be going on and when so his attention turned to who he could possibly be teamed up with. From what Naruto knew, the academy tended to put the students near the top of the class on teams with the students who scored nearer the bottom in order to create some sort of balance, which did make some sense as putting the top students together would lead to an overpowered group and putting the weakest ones together would result in a squad incapable of actually achieving anything.

Whilst that did narrow down the possibilities, since he had one of the lowest passing scores of the entire class, there were bound to be other factors taken into consideration, such as ensuring that the Genin would work well together or that their abilities would mesh well to cover each other's weaknesses, that made predicting his teammates more than a little tricky, especially since he didn't actually care enough to pay attention to the other students. All he really knew about the other students was that the clan children were all generally somewhere around the higher scoring end of things, with the notable exception of the lazy Nara boy, whilst the lower-scoring students were the civilian-born ones and, from what little he had heard in passing, the worst students were generally the girls that seemed to exist for the sole purpose of fawning over the last loyal Uchiha, though thankfully for the village as a whole at least half of those idiotic girls had failed to pass the exam at all.

His inability to work out who he would be teamed up with, let alone who his teacher would be, though it would probably be someone chosen with his Tailed Beast container status in mind, caused Naruto to sigh in slight frustration as, without that information, he would have to wait until the assignments themselves and the subsequent inevitable team introductions before he could properly plan things out, despite how bored he was getting. A quick glance around showed that the classroom was starting to fill up, though it would probably take the entirety of twenty minutes left until the actual team assignments for everybody to turn up.

With nothing else to do, the young Uzumaki fished out a book from his coat pocket, specifically the copy of the Bingo Book that he had pilfered from Mizuki the previous week, and started flipping through it as the other students busied themselves by chatting with their friends, none of them paying him even the slightest bit of attention as per usual, which suited him just fine. The book was a little out of date, owing to the fact that it had been a while since the recently deceased Chunin had been out in the field and thus he didn't bother getting the updated versions all that often, but it was still somewhat useful as it depicted Shinobi of notoriety at the time of the book's printing half a year ago.

Most of the individuals featured in the book appeared because they were powerful ninja, though there were a few that were listed more because of their deeds, like one former Kusa kunoichi who had seduced a Daimyo and then assassinated him once they were alone in bed, and so they served as a good way of measuring how strong Naruto himself actually was; currently, he was absolutely nowhere near even approaching the level of even the weakest person mentioned. There were also several people listed who possessed very interesting Kekkei Genkai that the blond had never heard of before and really wouldn't mind acquiring, though the strength of their wielders made the idea of even approaching them downright suicidal at the moment.

It was a shame that the book didn't list any Konoha ninja apart from those who had ended up going missing-nin, such as Itachi Uchiha and Orochimaru of the Sannin, as it could have given him some basic background information on his teacher once he knew who they were, but it wasn't that much of a surprise. Bingo Books were written and published by the various Hidden Villages purely for their own shinobi and Mizuki's was no exception as it was a Konoha edition. Publishing information on their own loyal shinobi in their Bingo Books was both a waste of space, as it wouldn't really be of much use to anyone since they could simply ask the shinobi in question if they really needed to know something, and a stupid security risk, as it wouldn't be too unlikely for some of the books to end up in enemy hands which would effectively amount to revealing the abilities of their village's elite to their enemies who could easily take advantage of it.

Hearing a commotion outside the classroom, with the noise steadily getting closer, Naruto glanced up at the clock and saw that it was almost time for Iruka to show up and announce the teams. He returned the book back to his pocket just as the Yamanaka and the pink-haired civilian girl barged in, closely followed by the Chunin instructor. After a quick application of the head-enlarging genjutsu to shut up the pair of arguing girls, which made Naruto silently question how they were still affected by it after being exposed to the exact same thing countless times over the years, Iruka launched into a quick speech about how he was proud of everyone for graduating and how, after being divided up into three-man teams each with a Jonin sensei, they would start taking on missions to help the village, which Naruto ended up tuning out since he didn't particularly care. Once the speech was done, the scarred Chunin started going through the teams, but the blond wasn't really paying much attention, opting instead to simply listen out for his own name.

"... Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno-" Iruka continued, having already announced several teams, though the second name caused Naruto to raise an eyebrow in slight confusion since he honestly didn't know who that was and thus concluded that they were probably a civilian-born student, a girl based on the name. "-and Sasuke Uchiha." Anything else the instructor may have said was immediately drowned out by the outburst of the pink-haired girl who was loudly bragging to both the Yamanaka and virtually every other girl present about being on a team with her crush, something about how 'true love conquers all'. At least it answered Naruto's unasked question of who exactly his teammate was, though the realisation that he would probably have to deal with such behaviour on a regular, if not daily, basis annoyed him considerably, even if it didn't show.

"As I was saying," Iruka said, levelling a glare at the fan girl he had eventually gotten to keep quiet, "your Jonin sensei is Kakashi Hatake. Team Eight consists of..."

Now that he knew who his teammates and teacher were going to be, Naruto stopped paying attention to the instructor as he wasn't particularly interested in what teams anybody else ended up on. Instead, the Uzumaki thought about his teammates and how being on a squad with them could affect him. The kunoichi probably wouldn't be anything more than an annoyance, what with her loud voice and immensely strong infatuation for their other teammate, whilst Sasuke would, at the very least, be someone he would keep an eye on due to his potential for manifesting his clan's Kekkei Genkai, the Sharingan. If nothing else, being on the same team as the would-be avenger would allow the blond to keep himself familiar with the other boy's abilities which would make subduing him much easier if he ever decided that he wanted the Sharingan for himself.

Unfortunately, Naruto wasn't familiar with the various Jonin of the village and, as such, had absolutely no idea what sort of person their teacher was, although he was probably quite strong as he had been chosen to train both the village's Jinchuriki and the last remaining Uchiha, whom the Uzumaki knew was favoured quite heavily by the civilians in an attempt to keep him loyal, even though some of them seemed more interested in trying to set their daughters up with him to try and incorporate their families into the well-known, respected, and most importantly rich clan. Without any information on the man, all Naruto really knew was that he would have to be very careful around his new teacher as there was every chance that he could discover the boy's ethically-questionable pastime, especially if he started displaying abilities that he had no business possessing such as Kekkei Genkai.

Seeing Iruka walk across the classroom to his desk out of the corner of his eye, Naruto refocused his attention just in time to hear the announcement that all of the students would meet their new squad leaders that afternoon so they were all free to take a break for a few hours until then, which made the blond silently question why they had to get there in the morning for the team announcements when they could have easily done it in the afternoon with all of the Jonin present since the whole thing had taken less than half an hour. With that said, many of the students quickly congregated into groups of three, presumably with their teammates, before heading out of the room. A quick glance confirmed that Sakura was focused completely on trying to secure a date with Sasuke, who in turn was steadfastly ignoring everything she said and seemed like he had something else on his mind. As it was obvious that neither of his new teammates were interested in talking with him or anything, Naruto simply ended up joining the throng of students leaving the classroom before heading home for lunch.

* * *

><p>When Naruto returned to his underground home, after going past his apartment and leaving a shadow clone there in the incredibly unlikely event that either of his teammates came looking for him, he was promptly pounced on by a very happy Koneko, who had gotten quite used to her master's constant presence over the last week. After extracting himself from the enthusiastic catgirl's hug, Naruto soon settled in the chair in his living room, since it was far too early to even contemplate lunch, with Koneko getting comfy in his lap and grabbed a book on the more unusual aspects of birds from his desk, carrying on reading from where he had previously stopped. The young blond wasn't particular interested in doing anything more physically demanding than reading at the moment since he had no idea whether or not his new teacher would be giving them his personal Genin test that afternoon and, if it was that day, he would rather be as rested as possible for it.<p>

The hours until he had to leave to go back to the academy were rather uneventful, as the only thing he did apart from reading was sort out some food around midday. Just as he was about to head off, Naruto's mind was filled with a series of memories that had come from the clone he had left in his apartment. Apparently, the Hokage had brought some silver-haired shinobi to the building and had even let himself in without bothering to knock first as he had thought that Naruto would stay at the academy like many of the other students had. The silver-haired man, whose face had been almost completely covered with the sole exception of his right eye, had quickly been introduced as Kakashi Hatake and the leader of Naruto's newly formed Genin squad. The reason he had gone there at all was stated to be that he wanted a better idea of what his new students were like and decided that seeing where they lived would allow him to come to a conclusion faster than if he had simply talked to them.

It was at this statement that Naruto was happy that he always tried to ensure that the apartment looked at least somewhat lived in as, whilst it was probably quite empty compared to most young teen's places, it was obviously someone's home and not just an empty apartment, even the bed looked like it was regularly slept in thanks to shadow clones. The pair of older shinobi didn't stick around for all that long, especially when the clone had pointed out that it was fairly sure that entering another's home like that without permission was illegal no matter who you were unless there was reason to suspect them of some crime, and the doppelganger promptly dispelled itself once it was sure that they were no longer in the area to inform its creator of these events.

* * *

><p>Upon returning to the classroom, Naruto absently noticed that many of the students had moved around, presumably to sit with their new teammates, with some looking happier about the new seating arrangement than others, though he had only really noticed the change because some of the more brightly dressed individuals were not where they usually were. As he took his usual seat, the blond noticed that Sasuke and the pink-haired girl whose name he was already starting to forget again were exactly where they were when he had left, the girl still pestering her crush for a date of some kind whilst the boy still completely ignored her existence, and he was half-tempted to consider the possibility that neither of them had actually moved during the break. Any further thoughts about such pointless things were promptly ignored as Iruka walked into the classroom followed by an assortment of shinobi and kunoichi that Naruto rightly assumed were the various instructors for the new squads, though interestingly Kakashi was not among them. One by one, the Jonin proceeded to each take their students away to get better acquainted or even test them until it was just Iruka, Naruto and his new teammates left in the room.<p>

As the passing minutes became hours, Naruto felt a slight headache developing as the loud kunoichi-wannabe continued in her pointless talking, seemingly without the need to stop for breath anywhere near as often as she should. That thought caused the young Uzumaki to briefly consider running a diagnostic technique on her body at some point to see how she could do it and possibly replicate it as well before he discarded idea as not worth the hassle. Iruka had long since left, saying that he had a faculty meeting to go to though both teenage boys present were more inclined to believe that he simply wanted to get away from the constant noise, leaving the new prospective Team Seven alone. Naruto himself was staying occupied by reading through his Bingo Book again, though it wasn't being held high enough for anyone to actually see what book it was since Genin generally didn't even know they existed let alone actually carry one around, whilst the last Uchiha was displaying exceptional willpower by not reacting at all to the incessant chattering right next to him, instead staring straight ahead and doing whatever it was that he usually did.

Exactly three hours after the other teachers had come and gone with their students, the classroom door slid open just enough for the masked Jonin to stick his head through. After a quick glance around to gauge their reactions to his tardiness, with Naruto and Sasuke both only expressing moderate annoyance whilst Sakura seemed torn between shouting at the man for making them wait for so long and trying to make a good first impression on her new teacher, Kakashi cheerfully announced that they didn't seem like a particularly positive bunch before instructing them to meet him on the roof in five minutes and disappearing in a small cloud of smoke.

The unhappy trio arrived at their destination just within their time limit and found their new instructor leaning against a railing with his back to them and his nose buried in a small orange book. Ignoring the faint giggling that could be heard every now and then, the new Genin trudged over to the steps at the other end of the rooftop near some trees and sat down with Sasuke in the middle trying to inch away from Sakura, who in turn was trying get subtly get closer to him, whilst Naruto simply opted to side off to one side. After a few more minutes of waiting, the silver-haired Jonin finally closed and pocketed his book before turning to face his new students.

"Finally, took you long enough to get up here," the man muttered, more to himself but the three teens all easily heard it and Sakura looked like she wanted to point out his own lateness before thinking again. "Now, why don't we start with introductions?"

"What do you want to know?" the sole female present asked.

"How about names, likes, dislikes, dreams for the future and things like that," Kakashi replied.

"Why don't you go first since we don't know anything about you," Naruto suggested, wondering what information, if any, he could glean from him.

"OK. My name is Kakashi Hatake. I have no real desire to tell you my likes and dislikes. Dreams for the future... Hmm," the masked shinobi paused here as though deep in thought before remembering that the other three were present. "I have some hobbies," he finished with a slight shrug of his shoulders and ultimately not telling them anything that they didn't already know. "Why don't you go next, Pinkie?" the Jonin suggested, gesturing an arm towards Sakura who looked a little caught out at being put on the spot like that.

"My name's Sakura Haruno. I like..." the pink-haired girl started only to trail off, not so subtly glancing at Sasuke with a slight blush. "My hobbies are..." she trailed off again with an even less subtle look and a more prominent blush. "My dream is to..." This time the pause was accompanied by a slight squeal of excitement, again with a glance at Sasuke.

"Any dislikes?" Kakashi asked with a faint sign of exasperation, already wondering what he did to deserve getting such a diehard fan girl as a student as well as why the academy hadn't managed to dissuade such views.

"Ino-pig!" the girl shouted without even a moment's thought.

"How about you, Broody?" the adult asked, this time gesturing to Sasuke.

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha. There are lots of things I dislike and I don't really like anything. I don't really have a dream per se but I do have an ambition. The resurrection of my clan and to kill a certain man," the young Uchiha proclaimed, which caused Sakura to mumble to herself about how cool he was.

"I see," Kakashi muttered, already expecting something like that just not quite to that extent. "You're up, Blondie," he stated, with a brief wave at Naruto.

"I'm Naruto Uzumaki. I guess animals count as a like," the young Jinchuriki said with a slight shrug of the shoulders since he wasn't really sure what else to say. "I don't like people who make judgements without understanding things properly and I don't really have any hobbies," he lied, since the few things he did do in his free time weren't exactly things he could mention. "I never really thought about any dreams for the future but surviving would be nice."

"OK then," Kakashi said, not entirely sure how to respond to that rather pessimistic last comment. "Now that introductions are out of the way, it's time for me to tell you all about your first task as shinobi that will occur tomorrow," he announced.

"What is it?" Sakura asked.

"Survival training," the Jonin responded.

"Survival training?" the kunoichi repeated. "Why is our first task training? We did enough of that at the academy." That comment got all three males present to look at her with varying degrees of incredulity since it suggested that she actually believed that the training they had at the academy would be enough for them to deal with the lifestyle of a shinobi.

"This isn't like your academy training. I'll be your opponent this time," Kakashi stated, earning some confused looks from both Sakura and Sasuke which only got worse when he started chuckling to himself, though Naruto soon cottoned on that he was referring to the extra test that determined whether or not a Genin team would stay that way or get sent back for remedial training.

"What's so funny?" the pink-haired girl asked, confused as to why he'd find the idea of training amusing.

"It's just that you're all going to freak out when I tell you," the silver-haired man replied cryptically. Since that didn't really answer anything, Sakura continued to try and get a straight reply which caused him to relent after a couple of minutes of enjoying their confusion.

"It's simple. Of the twenty-nine graduates, only nine will be selected as Genin whilst the rest get shipped back to the academy for more training. All in all, the exercise you'll do tomorrow has a failure rate of sixty-six percent!" Kakashi announced cheerfully, completely ignoring Sakura's indignant cry.

"Then what was the point of the graduation exam?" she asked, hoping that it would count for something at least.

"That was just to weed out the hopeless cases," the Jonin replied, waving it off as unimportant. "You can find all of the details on here," he continued, passing a sheet of paper to each of the teens. "It might be in your best interests to skip breakfast tomorrow since there's a good chance you'll just throw it up again."

With his piece said, the silver-haired man promptly disappeared in another cloud of smoke, leaving the three teens alone on the roof in various states of unhappiness and worry as they looked over the details of their upcoming test. Mere minutes after Kakashi's departure, Sasuke headed over to the roof's access door and left, presumably to go home, with Sakura following closely behind talking at him. With his two teammates gone, Naruto simply took another glance at the paper, which only had the number of a training ground and a time, and headed off home, thinking about potential plans for the following day.

* * *

><p>By the time he got in, the blond had come up with a couple of ideas but had no way of knowing how they would work against a Jonin. He had to be careful with whatever he did since he didn't want Kakashi catching wind of his chimeras, despite them being the only thing he really had going for himself as a shinobi. Sure, he was the container for the most powerful entity in existence but he had no way to actually take advantage of that status so it was pointless for the time being. He did also have the techniques he picked up from Mizuki but the illusion wouldn't work against someone of Kakashi's calibre and he hadn't really had enough practice with the earth-walking technique to use it in the field. Naruto was a little unhappy that he hadn't had a chance to actually improve his own body first but the sheer amount of time it would take to properly track down and capture the annoyingly elusive spider that he needed, let alone the other animal as well, would leave him without enough time to actually practise the ability he would gain; not to mention that said ability would certainly attract attention since it just wasn't something humans could do.<p>

Since he didn't really have anything he could use in a normal fight, which was probably what was going to happen, Naruto instead chose to go with rigging the encounter in his favour by setting traps in advance as Kakashi had thoughtfully told them all where the test would be carried out. With his course of action decided upon, the blond looked over a map of the relevant training ground he had acquired a while back for testing purposes and had a shadow clone go over the finer details on a duplicate whilst he and Koneko ate their tea. Once they had finished eating and then feeding the other residents, the catgirl went off for a nap whilst Naruto collected the annotated map from his double, dispelling it in the process, and headed off to pick up his assistant for the evening's activities.

The blond Jinchuriki was soon standing outside one of the doors of his secondary base that held one of his creations. Unlike the other doors that were all of a normal size, this one had been split in half horizontally in the middle with the lower part being sealed to the wall to prevent leakage. The top half still opened and Naruto quickly did so, revealing that the room inside was full of soil that was piled high enough to reach just under the top of the bottom part of the door. Pulling on a pair of thick gloves taken from a bag hanging on the outside of the door, both so that he didn't accidentally lose a finger and because this particular creature was quite slippery to hold, he banged on the soil's surface in a rhythmic pattern and was soon rewarded by a small snout emerging that was quickly followed by the rest of the animal.

The animal in question looked similar to a normal mole except that it was about a foot long from nose to tail and its jet black fur was so thin and short that it was virtually non-existent. Said fur glistened slightly in the light due to the thin layer of mucus that coated it, a trait acquired from earthworms, which served to both lubricate it to allow it to slide through the ground more easily and also help stick the surrounding soil together to help prevent tunnels caving in. The mole's skin, which was visible due to its thin fur, was a dull black and was also much thicker and tougher than one would expect at first glance. Jutting out from in front of its lips was a group of strong chisel-like front teeth, two per jaw, that also helped it to move through the earth by breaking it apart and was the main reason for the gloves he wore whenever he dealt with it. In addition to the unusual teeth that no mole should possess, the chimera had no eyes, since it didn't need them underground, nor did it have any visible ears, though it was indeed capable of hearing. It did, however, have several long whiskers on its snout to help it keep track of its surroundings and its tail was also surprisingly thick and powerful for a mole, capable of compacting soil together to help cement tunnels.

Despite all of these abnormal features, the most striking thing about the creature was its legs. The back pair was quite stubby and unimpressive but they served their purpose of pushing the chimera through its tunnels well enough. By contrast, the front set was quite muscular and each ended in five long curved claws. Unlike most animals, these claws were quite broad and, barring their tips, rather blunt. Interestingly, the claws somewhat resembled shovels when they were all held together, which helped with digging as they were strong enough to push through most forms of earth with relative ease, and seemed to be attached directly to the ends of the legs due to how small the front paws were by comparison.

Whilst this particular chimera was generally rather useless in most situations since it had immense difficulty simply walking due to its really long front claws, it was quite possibly the best burrower in existence, so skilled that Naruto had to line its room with thick sheets of steel to stop it from tunnelling out like it had attempted to on several occasions, and that was exactly what he wanted. His plan was simple enough; he was going to take the mole-like creature to the training ground where tomorrow's test was set to take place and have it dig out a intricate network of narrow tunnels close to the surface with a line of explosive tags trailing out behind it. As long as he was careful to avoid causing another sinkhole like he had with a couple of other training grounds back when he was still teaching the chimera how to follow instructions, he would end up with a literal minefield for use against Kakashi; something that should, at the very least, be of some help. Plus, if all else failed, he could always detonate all of them at once to make the entire field collapse in on itself.

There was also the large river that ran along one side of the training ground but, unfortunately, Naruto couldn't really come up with anything to take advantage of that, especially since he didn't have any kind of aquatic chimera. That was something he would probably remedy at some point but, to his knowledge, there weren't any particularly interesting fish or other water-dwelling creatures in the village so it would have to wait until he left for a mission since he probably wouldn't have the time to travel to the coast and back by himself without his absence being noticed.

Picking up the tunnelling creature, the young Uzumaki gently placed it inside a large animal carrier that he had for just such a reason after instructing it to keep still for the time being with another rhythmic series of taps on the soil. He'd chosen that particular method of communication over actual speech because the chimera's primary form of sensory input was tactile and he had spent most of his time with it teaching it how to recognise various different tapping sequences so that he could instruct it whilst it was underground. With the mole-like chimera safely stowed away in the cage, Naruto headed down the tunnel towards the exit that was nearest to his destination.

After he emerged from the hidden passageway, the blond quickly made his way towards the training ground, which thankfully wasn't too far away. Once he had arrived, he made a dozen or so shadow clones which proceeded to disappear into the forest that covered the other three sides of the field to fill it with more conventional traps. Afterwards, he placed the carrier on the ground and released its occupant, quickly stomping on the ground a few times before it could start digging. As expected, this action stopped the chimera in its tracks and gave Naruto enough time to tie the end of the string of explosive notes securely around its waist. He then gave stamped out another signal and the creature immediately shoved its claws into the ground.

Within mere seconds, the burrower was out of sight with only the small hole and the disappearing chain of paper tags serving as evidence that it was ever there. Illuminating his map with a torch so that he could see it in the rapidly fading light, Naruto spent the next half an hour tapping out instructions to the mole to ensure that it distributed the explosives underneath the entire field, periodically making it stick a claw up above the surface to check it was where he thought it was. By the time it was done, the Jinchuriki had received the memories of his doubles as they dispelled after completing their purpose. Once the chimera resurfaced back out of the same hole it had made going in, Naruto untied the string from around its waist and returned his creation to the animal carrier. He then did his best to make the small opening in the ground as unnoticeable as possible before heaving the container up and heading back.

After arriving back at his home, Naruto returned the tunnelling creature to its room, where it immediately disappeared into the soil, and dumped a load of worms in as well as a reward for its good work. With that done and nothing else particularly important to do that day, the blond decided to turn in for the night since Kakashi had scheduled the test to start at six o'clock the following morning and, despite not needing as much sleep as most, he wanted to be fully rested for it. Kicking off his slightly soil-coated boots, he climbed into bed, which was quite difficult due to a sleeping Koneko taking up the majority of the space, and was immediately wrapped in a tight hug as the catgirl snuggled up against him with a happy smile on her face.

* * *

><p>The following morning, Naruto woke up rather early, as per usual, and quickly discovered that he was completely immobilised by the strong arms and legs of his companion as they were coiled firmly around his body; her arms pinning his to his sides whilst her legs were entwined with his own in such a way that he could do little more than wiggle his toes. Unable to move at all, the blond found himself at a loss as to how to wake the sleeping brunette. Normally, he would either replace himself with something else using the Substitution Technique or tickle the heavy-sleeper to wake her up. Unfortunately, neither of these options were much use in this particular situation due to his current inability to move his arms at all to form the required hand signs or reach Koneko's more ticklish spots.<p>

Since his usual methods of rousing the catgirl were impossible to achieve and traditional methods simply wouldn't be enough, the young Jinchuriki was forced to think outside of the box if he wanted to attend his Genin test in a little less than two hours. He didn't want to do anything like pinch or gently bite her, despite how effective such tactics would probably be, because it would likely cause her to fall out with him and it could take a while for her to be fully comfortable around him again, plus the accompanying reflexive actions could injure one of them as well. With that out and past experience telling him that shouting in her ear would have a similar reaction, Naruto could only see one path available to him and started rocking back and forth to try and shift them towards the edge of the bed. Each movement caused the slumbering brunette to tighten her grip but they soon toppled over the frame and down onto the floor, with the shinobi getting squashed underneath Koneko.

After landing, the catgirl simply shuffled slightly in her sleep before settling down again, though her body did shudder briefly in the process when certain sensitive areas brushed against the back of one of Naruto's trapped hands, and he started trying to come up with another way to get her to wake up. However, barely a couple of minutes later, her eyes slowly opened as she yawned, releasing her hold to stretch her arms. Once she was done, the half-asleep brunette simply sat there, straddling her master, as her mind slowly booted up after a good night's rest.

When Koneko's body started to descend again in an attempt to go back to sleep, Naruto acted quickly and ran his fingertips up and down her side, or rather the fingertips of his left hand since his right was still stuck underneath her. The unexpected tickling accomplished its aim of bringing the brunette to full alertness, though the accompanying movements caused another shudder to run down her back due to the awkward placement of his right knuckles, and she quickly looked down to see her creator underneath her, her eyes slightly glazed over from the unfamiliar sensations she had just experienced.

Without even having to be told, the feline young woman slowly climbed to her feet after a simple gesture and Naruto left to have his morning shower, missing the look of mild confusion on the brunette's face as she stood there and watched him go. When he had gotten dressed and finished preparing breakfast and he still hadn't seen her, the Uzumaki went looking and soon found her sat on the floor in the bedroom staring uncertainly at her own crotch, displaying what would have been incredible flexibility had she been completely human. It didn't take long for him to figure out why she was doing that and he made a mental note to sit down and talk to her sometime after his test when he had more time so that she actually understood these things properly. In the meantime, the blond simply explained that what she had felt was perfectly normal and that there was nothing wrong with her in an attempt to distract her and get her to go and eat breakfast. It seemed to work as she followed him to the kitchen and soon started devouring her food. Once they had both finished, they went around to feed the other chimeras before Naruto headed out to the training ground for Kakashi's test, though it was clear that the catgirl's mind was still occupied by the pleasant sensations she had felt earlier.

* * *

><p>Despite being a little delayed by the surprisingly difficult time he had getting up, Naruto still arrived at the designated training ground almost five minutes early and quickly spotted his teammates standing near the large wooden posts, Sakura looking so tired that it seemed like a light breeze would knock her over and Sasuke looking only a little more awake even though he was hiding his drowsiness much better. Neither of them seemed to notice the blond's arrival, which wasn't all that much of a surprise considering how drained they looked, so he decided to simply settle down in a tree to wait for his teacher.<p>

After fifteen minutes, Kakashi still hadn't shown up and Naruto was starting to get the impression that the previous day's tardiness might actually be typical of the man instead of the result of unexpected occurrences, though he would wait until the man appeared before making any proper assumptions. Once another ten minutes had passed, it seemed that Sasuke had reached a similar conclusion since he had sat down with his back to one of the wooden posts for a light nap, probably with the intention of being as rested as possible for the upcoming test. As the Uchiha did so, the blond pulled out his book on avian physiology and started reading from where he had stopped the previous day, making sure to keep as aware of his surroundings as possible so that he wouldn't be caught off guard if the Jonin turned up out of the blue. Sakura, meanwhile, decided against using the extra time to rest herself and instead started pacing back and forth whilst muttering to herself about scarecrows that couldn't turn up on time.

An hour after the scheduled arrival time, Sasuke was still asleep, though the slight twitches he made with the kunai in his hand every time some unexpected noise was heard showed that he was still at least somewhat aware of his surroundings. Naruto himself was considerably further through his book and Sakura had given up pacing and had settled down next to the post beside Sasuke's, though she had still not made any attempt to get any rest which was possibly due to academy students being taught that sleeping in the field should be avoided unless absolutely necessary and even then they shouldn't sleep too heavily. This continued for the next two and a half hours, though the pink-haired girl had looked like she had fallen asleep on numerous occasions only to jolt herself awake mere moments later each time.

Suddenly, a cloud of smoke appeared in the middle of the field which quickly dissipated to reveal the typically aloof Kakashi, who tilted his head to the side to avoid the kunai that had been launched by the now fully alert Sasuke. He might have imagined it but Naruto, who had placed his book safely back in his pocket as soon as the smoke started to form, thought that the silver-haired man seemed impressed with the reaction the other boy had displayed, though it was very hard to tell with the vast majority of his face covered.

"You're late!" Sakura screeched as soon as she saw Kakashi, only for her jaws to snap shut and a faint flush of embarrassment to appear on her face when she realised that she had just shouted at her new teacher.

"Sorry about that," the masked shinobi said, sounding fairly apologetic. "A black cat crossed my path so I had to go all the way around the village and cross its path to avoid the bad luck," he explained, earning stares of blatant disbelief due to the blatantly fake excuse, though there was always the possibility that the man was just very superstitious.

"What kind of excuse is that?" the sole female present shouted, apparently deciding that making a good first impression was now less important that expressing her anger at being made to wait for so long for no reason.

"Anyway, now that we're all here, it's time for your survival training," Kakashi announced, ignoring Sakura's outburst with practised ease.

"But Naruto's not here yet," the kunoichi-in-training pointed out.

"You need to be more aware of your surroundings," the blond calmly pointed out, now leaning against the end wooden post right next to Sakura on the other side to Sasuke. His voice caused the startled girl to jump away from him with a yelp since she had had absolutely no idea he was there whilst Sasuke glanced at him in mild confusion before reaching some conclusion in his mind and turning his attention back to Kakashi.

"As you can see, I have some bells here and the objective of this training is for you to get one of them from me," the Jonin explained once the three prospective Genin had refocused on him, holding up the bells in question as he did. "You have until noon to accomplish this and I strongly advise you all to come at me with the intent to kill otherwise you won't succeed. You can use anything and everything you have at your disposal. Any questions?" he asked as he pulled out an alarm clock and set it for noon before placing it on a large rock behind him.

"Won't you get hurt if we attack you with intent to kill?" Sakura asked, earning stares of incredulity from both Naruto and Sasuke and a difficult to discern look of amusement from Kakashi. "Plus there are only two bells and three of us," she pointed out afterwards.

"I think I'll be fine," the Jonin reassured her, "and I am aware that there are only two bells. Anyone who doesn't have one by noon goes without lunch and will be sent back to the academy for remedial training," he explained. Almost on cue, both Sasuke's and Sakura's stomachs grumbled, with the latter being noticeably louder than the former, and the pair quickly looked at Naruto when they noticed that his hadn't.

"What? He only suggested that we not eat breakfast because of the possibility of it being thrown up afterwards. Only an idiot goes into an exercise like this without eating properly in advance," the blond stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, which it was to him.

After that was done with, Sasuke gained a look of determination and threw several kunai and shuriken at the Jonin in quick succession with the intention of catching him off guard with the sudden attack. Unfortunately for him, the masked shinobi evaded each projectile whilst barely moving and disappeared in a blur of speed, reappearing behind Sasuke with a hand gripped around the boy's wrist to stop him throwing anything else.

"I didn't say 'start' yet," he calmly stated, leaning his head back to avoid the kunai that was swung towards his face by the trapped Uchiha. "Go," he said as he let go of the boy's wrist and disappeared in another cloud of smoke.

Since their teacher/target was no longer present, the three teens all leapt off into the surrounding forest either to hide and come up with a plan or stay out of his way whilst operating traps, with Sasuke and Sakura being the former and Naruto obviously being the latter. As soon as he was amongst the trees, the blond made dozens of shadow clones which promptly spread out to try and find the silver-haired Jonin. He needn't have bothered, though, since said Jonin had reappeared in the middle of the training ground with his nose buried in his orange book shortly after the trio of Genin had departed.

Not wanting to reveal his minefield too early, Naruto had one of his clones cut a tripwire he had placed the previous evening which sent a barrage of kunai flying towards Kakashi's general direction whilst another group of the doubles leapt out of the foliage to try and overwhelm him with numbers, even though he seriously doubted either of those actions would actually work. He was quickly proven correct when the aloof shinobi dodged the incoming weapons with the same ease he had Sasuke's and engaged the clone horde in a brief taijutsu match before replacing himself with one of the duplicates to try and cause confusion. Whilst it didn't succeed since Naruto just dispelled all of the copies involved, it did give the man enough time to disappear so well that the blond would never have found him without his network of hidden shadow clones; even with them it was still quite difficult.

From what his clones could determine, Kakashi either had no idea where he actually was and was thus trying to find him or he was heading off to one of the other two Genin to test them. Personally, Naruto felt that it was the latter since, whilst he was surprisingly good at hiding and stealth in generally if he wanted to be, the silver-haired man was a Jonin and could probably locate him at any given moment. Still, if he was going to test one of the other two then it would probably help him to go and observe to try and gain at least some kind of insight as to what sort of a ninja he was. With that in mind, the blond instructed some of his other clones, by creating and immediately dispelling another to pass its memories to the masses, to follow his prospective teacher as discreetly as possible.

It took a while but the young Uzumaki eventually got some memory feedback that revealed that the masked shinobi had chosen to track down Sasuke. He hadn't really learnt anything of interest about the Uchiha that he wasn't already aware of, since the encounter had only really consisted of taijutsu and weapon skills plus a large and needlessly flashy fireball, but he had discovered that Kakashi knew an earth technique that allowed him to hide underground, possibly in a similar manner to the one he picked up from Mizuki, and then pull Sasuke under the surface so that he was buried up to his neck. The ninjutsu interested him greatly as, if he could pull it off successfully, it could potentially give him enough time to sedate other shinobi without having to worry too much about counterattacks; of course, it would be quite difficult to get the drop on the stronger ninja that he would actually be interested in capturing but knowing the technique certainly wouldn't be a bad thing, especially since he could probably have a clone use it to minimise the risk to himself. Unfortunately, his clones had not seen the hand sign sequence required to perform the technique, only happening to see the last two of however many were involved, and thus he wouldn't be burying people like that anytime soon.

With Sasuke incapacitated, Kakashi had gone off again, presumably to find Sakura, and this assumption was confirmed barely five minutes later when a loud scream echoed throughout the training ground. Sadly, none of Naruto's clones were in exactly the right area at the time so he didn't know the specifics of what had happened, just that the kunoichi-wannabe was currently passed out on the ground and their teacher was nowhere in sight. One of the doubles had landed on the ground near the unconscious girl and gave her a quick onceover, though it hadn't used any kind of medical diagnostic technique partly in case the Jonin was still around and partly because it wasn't overly interested in knowing whether or not she was fine. Since there weren't any injuries that the duplicate could spot, both it and the original concluded that she had probably fallen prey to some kind of illusion, her scream suggesting that it may have been a particularly horrifying one.

Suddenly, with barely a moment's warning due to a dispelling shadow clone providing him with memories, Kakashi appeared behind the blond, causing him to leap out from his now pointless cover and into the main space of the training ground. The older shinobi followed at a leisurely pace which gave the teen enough time to create another dozen or so shadow clones and then take advantage of the subsequent smoke cloud to replace himself with another shadow clone that was hiding nearby in the forest.

"I take it you're the one who set all of those traps in the forest?" Kakashi asked, perfectly calm despite the dozen blonds standing in front of him.

"What traps?" one of the clones replied innocently, though it did nothing to fool the man.

"You can cut the act, you know?" the Jonin said. "Whilst the majority of them were simple enough for most newly graduated Genin to set up, the sheer number of them suggests that it was a large group that placed them considering that none of you knew which training ground this test would be taking place at until yesterday afternoon. So either somebody got a crowd of people involved or you just used a load of clones to do the work for you." This statement was punctuated by Kakashi pulling out several lengths of wire and other items that had been used by the blond as trap components the previous day, showing that he had detected and either dismantled or evaded every trap he had come across during his time in the forest.

"You never said we weren't allowed to trap the place in advance," the same clone pointed out with a slight shrug of the shoulders. "It's just common sense to do whatever you can to give yourself a fighting chance against a superior opponent." That was something that Naruto truly believed; there was no such thing as going too far to survive. If he had felt differently, then he probably wouldn't have developed the Chimera Technique anywhere near as much as he had over the last few years, if at all, due to the potential moral implications involved with abducting and experimenting on other people.

"True," the masked shinobi conceded, since the point was absolutely correct, just not something any prospective Genin he had tested had ever thought of before. Anything else the man may have said was lost as he was forced to dodge several incoming barrages of kunai from completely different directions. The attack hadn't been all that hard to avoid but it had still given the group of clones enough time to execute the very hastily modified plan they had just been informed of via dispersing shadow clone.

With a single hand seal, the entire group was engulfed in smoke, from which several small monkeys flew out towards the slightly confused Kakashi. Despite being caught off guard by the very unexpected tactic, he threw a kunai at the nearest of the bunch of what could only be transformed shadow clones, only for it to dodge with the same nimbleness that actual monkeys possessed. Even though they were nothing more than fragile shadow clones that would pop with a single decent hit, the group of monkeys proved to be surprisingly challenging to deal with since they were far more agile than they should have been. Sure, proper monkeys were just as supple but these had to be transformed clones of Naruto and there was no way that he was that dextrous; hell, some of them were even using their tails in a perfectly natural manner to aid their movements. Even though he knew it wasn't possible as he would have been informed if it was, Kakashi briefly considered the possibility that these were real animals that the blond had summoned to help him, although he knew for a fact that the summoning contract for monkeys belonged to the Sarutobi clan and Naruto wouldn't be allowed to sign it due to not being a member; plus the idea of someone fresh out of the academy actually being capable of summoning was almost laughable.

Meanwhile, the real Naruto was sat in the trees overlooking the scene feeling happy, and more than a little surprised, that his mostly untested idea had worked out. It wasn't actually all that complicated; it just took advantage of the fact that shadow clones were composed entirely out of chakra and were thus slightly more affected when they used the Transformation Technique to change their form. Unlike with actual flesh and blood people who only took on the appearance of their target in a manner very similar to an illusion, pure chakra constructs were much more malleable and thus actually took on the desired shape. However, that fact alone didn't explain the extremely monkey-like monkeys since just taking on the shape of an animal didn't necessarily mean that the clone had the same build-up as one. Usually, a shadow clone transformed into an animal of any kind would still only be able to move like a person because all that the transformation would change is the external appearance. Naruto, however, actually knew all about the internal structure of a monkey which was why his clones were able to move about just as well as the genuine article, though their movements were a little clumsy due to lack of practice.

With the monkeys busy swarming Kakashi, Naruto took the opportunity to launch another salvo of weapons to try and keep the man distracted long enough for one of the doubles to snag a bell. Unfortunately, the Jonin had gotten over his initial surprise very quickly and was now swiftly dispersing clone after clone with simple strikes. All of a sudden, another scream of 'Sasuke!' ran out through the training ground, indicating that Sakura was once again conscious. The unexpected noise distracted both the clone horde and Kakashi momentarily, though one monkey apparently either hadn't noticed or just didn't care enough to divert its attention and used the opportunity to jump onto the silver-haired man's back. With the few remaining members of the group occupying his attention, the clone on his back managed to brush a finger against one of the bells, not quite in the right position to grab one properly, only to be violently thrown off and dispelled with a kunai slash before it could even contemplate making a second attempt.

By this point the horde of monkey clones had been reduced to just two and the original Naruto was busy racking his brain for any animal he knew about that could be more successful. Sadly, whilst he had knowledge on a good deal of animals there just wasn't one that had evolved with the main focus of stealing bells from the waist of a shinobi, and there probably never would be since that was a ridiculous reason for a creature to evolve. He knew of a couple that could possibly sneak up on his teacher if he got lucky but they wouldn't be able to get a bell without him noticing and the one or two that he could think of that could maybe steal a bell wouldn't be able to get over there easily, usually due to the very real risk of being crushed. Even if he sent a clone over in one of the more stealthy forms and had it transform to take a bell, the actual transformation would be noticed immediately, especially since it would have to be done right next to the man.

Rather annoyingly, Naruto did have a couple of chimera that could possibly manage the task at hand without too much difficulty, using various means, but that would mean revealing their existence and that was something that he wanted to avoid for as long as possible since there were bound to be very severe consequences if it was discovered that he had been abducting and experimenting on villagers; he had learnt a bit about what had happened to Orochimaru of the Sannin whilst at the academy since he was one of the best examples of a very promising ninja turning missing-nin and being forced to flee their village to avoid being executed.

Just as the final monkey clone was dispelled, providing Naruto with the rather unpleasant memory of having its throat slit, a large ball of fire flew towards Kakashi from the other end of the field. After sparing a quick glance to the flames' source to see Sasuke standing there, visibly winded after using so much chakra, with Sakura just behind, the blond decided that this was as good a time as any to reveal his trump card for this challenge. With his clone network informing him of where Kakashi had ended up after using the Substitution Technique to evade the fireball, he placed his hands together in a single hand sign and focused on the half a dozen or so explosive notes that were buried underneath the Jonin's current location. Without any warning for the other three people present short of heavily muffled noises that were barely audible, the ground around Kakashi's feet blew apart as explosions erupted from the earth. Even dampened as they were by the surrounding soil, the blasts were still powerful enough to rock the ground.

Once the flames had died down enough, Naruto saw the heavily damaged log that he had been expecting and soon got the older shinobi's new location from a clone. That new position was then engulfed in similar explosions which were again dodged at the cost of a log. After another couple of blasts, the blond started to notice a slight pattern to the locations that Kakashi escaped to each time, which wasn't much of a surprise since the man barely had any time to plan out his escape due to how little warning there was and thus the Substitution Techniques were rather straightforward to predict. Since it was becoming apparent that the Jonin always fled more or less the same distance each time, Naruto made several more clones, with all but one of them turning into bats and heading out, and detonated most of the explosives around the man's current location, leaving just one area untouched. The last clone then set off the explosives underneath the masked shinobi barely a second later, which caused him to predictably flee to the open area left from the other set of detonations.

Immediately, the bats swarmed the Jonin only for them to be brutally dispelled mere moments later when the ground erupted in flames yet again. At this point, the vast majority of the field was comprised of numerous overlapping craters as most of the explosives he had planted had already been used. Just as Kakashi prepared to replace himself again, Naruto appeared from the surrounding trees with a single bat resting on his shoulder, which soon disappeared in a cloud of smoke since it was no longer needed.

"Hey Sensei, did I pass?" the blond asked, waving a single small bell around by the string it was attached to.

"Huh?" was the weary man's rather simple reply as a hand reached down to his waist to confirm that his bells were indeed missing. "Where's the other one?" he asked, since the blond only seemed to have one.

"Over there," Naruto replied, indicating somewhere off to the side where the other bell had fallen after accidentally being dropped by his bat clone on the way back. When Kakashi looked over there and seemed both surprised and pleased, the young Uzumaki followed his gaze and saw that the second bell was currently being held by an amazed and slightly perturbed Sakura, who was looking at all of the craters in worry and a little fear, with Sasuke next to her in a similar state, though he was hiding it much better.

"OK then, you all pass. Congratulations, we'll meet back here tomorrow morning at eight o'clock where we'll start on training and missions," the silver-haired shinobi said, sounding as though he just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. "On second thoughts, go to Training Ground Seven instead since this one probably won't be usable for a while," he added as an afterthought. "Also, Naruto, you should dismantle all of your other traps so nobody gets caught in them." With that said, the man disappeared in a smoke cloud indicative of the Body Flicker Technique, muttering something about needing a drink.

Somewhat surprised that the Jonin had passed them all just like that, the three new Genin simply gawked at the spot he had disappeared from for a couple of seconds until Naruto headed off into the surrounding forest to get started on taking apart his remaining traps, both because there was no longer a reason for them to be there and because leaving them would be a waste of materials. To help speed things along, the blond used a horde of clones to assist with the disassembly. With the extra aid, Naruto had finished the task in less than ten minutes, and he had also learnt how a good few of the traps Kakashi had encountered had been disabled which should help him make his traps more effective in the future.

Once he was done, the blond sealed all of the trap pieces away in a scroll for easier carrying, otherwise he would have been hauling around a pile of parts similar in size to himself, and headed home, taking care to go via his apartment in case anyone was following him or wanted to talk to him. He didn't end up encountering anyone worth mentioning, in fact the training ground had been completely empty when he had re-emerged with his things and detonated the remaining explosives to hide all evidence of the tunnels they were contained in, but he still discreetly made a shadow clone and left it in the apartment just to be on the safe side.

* * *

><p>By the time he arrived back home, it was still only around one o'clock in the afternoon. Naruto quickly dropped off his scroll of trap parts on his desk in his living room and had a wander around to find Koneko. Since she wasn't in the living room or the kitchenfood storage room and there wasn't anywhere else she would be unless instructed, it was rather obvious that she was in the bedroom. Opening the door, the Jinchuriki expected her to be asleep, as she took naps on a regular basis, but instead found her sat on the bed with her legs spread far wider than a human could comfortably manage and a finger tentatively poking around her crotch.

Despite the fact that he really should have at least considered this as a possibility after what had happened that morning, the blond was so surprised at the sight before him that he simply ended up staring for a few moments until the brunette noticed his presence and tackled him in a hug that caught him so off guard that they both fell to the floor in a heap with the happy catgirl sat on top of him. Once he had managed to coax the feline young woman off of him, he got her to sit down on the bed next to him so he could talk to her about something he had never expected that he would have to explain. In order to keep things fairly simple, as well as make his life a bit easier, Naruto didn't go into too much detail and just explained that what she had felt was a perfectly normal thing and that, whilst pleasurable, wasn't something she should be seeking out so she should refrain from trying to recreate the sensation as he didn't want her to hurt herself; this comment caused her to beam in happiness at how her master cared about her well-being.

He explained things that way partly because it would be much easier than giving a detailed talk about sex and masturbation, partly because avoiding self-pleasuring wouldn't do her any harm, partly because he didn't want her to get addicted to masturbation as it would probably have some negative impact on her performance and partly because, like anything else that caused a specific chemical reaction in the brain, he wasn't entirely sure how it would affect her since he wasn't too certain how her brain was actually made up since he had focussed more on making a living body when he had created her; there was always a possibility, albeit a fairly slim one, that the chemicals associated with arousal and sexual release could cause some kind of imbalance and harm her, especially if they were released in large enough quantities. By the time he had finished explaining everything to her, which had taken much longer than he had anticipated, both Naruto's and Koneko's stomachs grumbled in hunger so they headed off to get some lunch, as neither of them had eaten since breakfast, though the former was mentally making plans to give the girl another examination soon as these recent developments had made him curious about whether or not she had acquired a feline's estrus cycle during her creation as she had not displayed any signs of human menstruation during the two and half weeks since; plus he would have to keep an eye on her if she did end up experiencing heat periods.

After the pair had had their fills, they ended up in the living room with the blond looking over an annotated map of Training Ground 44 whilst making notes on another piece of paper and the brunette sat in his lap snuggled up against him; even though she was getting used to him being out for hours at a time, she still enjoyed being with her master whenever she could. About half an hour later, once Naruto had checked and doubled checked numerous things, he woke up the sleeping girl and headed into his laboratory to collect everything he would need for his little quest that evening. Once he was fully prepared, the Uzumaki stopped by one of the chimera holding rooms to collect a single member of the small pack present inside and made his way towards the exit nearest to the dangerous forest; he had a couple of animals to track down.

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><p><strong>AN: That's chapter four done. Sorry for the delay, this would have been done sometime last week if not a bit earlier but I was on a training course for the last two weeks, that annoyingly turned out to be a waste of time, so I haven't had much writing time lately.**

**For anyone that's thinking that the team formation could have been more original, I will point out that all of the reasons for Team Seven containing who it did in canon are all perfectly valid in this story as well (though Naruto was near the bottom of the class because he chose to be as opposed to just not being a good student like in canon) so there was no reason for the higher-ups that organise the teams to do anything different.**

**Next, I wouldn't mind some feedback about the Bell Test since it was written without much of a plan in mind except that I didn't want them to pass with the whole food sharing thing and Naruto doesn't display teamwork because he just doesn't trust others (incidentally that lack of a plan is responsible for the whole shadow clones turning into animals thing as that was a completely spur-of-the-moment thing, plus the idea of a monkey swarm is rather amusing to me).**

**Next chapter will cover Naruto acquiring the two animals he needs in order to gain the ability he wants (one of which was briefly mentioned in this chapter) as well as actually assimilating them and will probably also cover the start of Team Seven's lives as shinobi with missions. For anyone who's curious about the ability that Naruto is aiming to acquire, I will reveal that the chimera he has that possesses it has already appeared in this story, sort of, just not in this chapter.**

**Finally, a quick shout out to an anonymous reviewer from October 19th known only as 'Guest' and SPark681, who both mentioned the idea of Koneko going into heat at some point. I'll say right now that I had honestly not even thought of that as a possibility so I wanted to thank these two for bringing it to my attention. It is something that I do like the sound of incorporating but I currently don't have much of an idea of how it would play out. This is also the reason that there are mentions of Koneko discovering sexual stimulation in this chapter, as that would eventually have some role in how she reacts to the whole heat cycle thing, since if she didn't know how good it would feel she wouldn't be as interested in trying to experience the full thing. (Though I will admit that it was also vaguely influenced by a PM conversation I've been having with someone who asked me about the possibility of a chimera girl pairing/harem)**


End file.
